Lust
by Seraphim Grace
Summary: Crawford starts to watch his counterpart but finds himself out of control of what he sees. Rated for language and suggestion. complete Crawford POV
1. How should I know? The enormous wheels o

Part 1

_How should I know? The enormous wheels of will_

It started off as surveillance. He was a threat to me, to my team, so I set Prodigy to watch him, to record his every move. Every time he walked past a security camera I knew it. Whenever he bought anything not with cash I knew it. At first Prodigy would prepare me a monthly report of what he did and who with. Then it became weekly. None of what he brought me was any use. He had bought a CD by X artist. He had bought such and such a book and read it in the park with a cup of black coffee. It became apparent he bought the important things with cash.

He wasn't an enemy, he was an inconvenience. But he could be an enemy. I had seen many things in regards to this one, the others were just children, nothing to worry about or fret over. He was the problem. He was cold, and determined, and stubborn. What he wanted he got, just like me. That was why I started surveillance. Estet gave us many advantages, state of the art tracking was one of them.

He didn't go out much, he didn't shop much and when he did he bought few frivolous items. At six am he left the shop by car and went to the east, there he vanished from surveillance for at least an hour, more often between two and four, then he would return as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, although for him, it hadn't. Then he worked in the shop from between four and eight hours, Prodigy had got a copy of their shift rota and it was easy to predict the absences in relation to his shifts. He always left at six and returned a good half hour before his shift. After his shift he would take a walk, sometimes stopping into a store, these usually coincided with release dates. He was as meticulous in his shopping as everything else. Once he had bought a sweater. Twice a week he would go to the post office to send something overseas. I didn't care enough to intercept the post, it was obvious where it was going.

On the days that he sent the letters he would stop off on his way home at a supermarket where he never spent more than four thousand yen. Prodigy's Intel suggested that it was his turn to feed them. He even got copies of the receipts and it became obvious from his ingredients he could cook, and cook well. At that point he had been up thirteen hours. Then depending on the day he would either stay in his apartment where there was no sign of a television and read or listen to music, or once a month he would go drinking with a friend, I even had Intel on his friend. The friend paid for everything. He came home alone. He never slept for more than six hours.

I disliked the blank spots in my information, they were inefficient. I despised inefficiency and took over his surveillance myself. Tokyo was covered in security cameras like fleas on a cat, but like the cat it had blind spots and whatever it was he did, he did it in a blind spot. I changed camera angles, I hacked mainframes, I changed codes, and I couldn't figure out what he did, he didn't pay for it, or if he did it was in cash, but withdrew no money to do it. It was in an area full of private residences but whatever way he took he missed the cameras until his reappearance in the same spot where he vanished.

I bugged his car. That proved as fruitful as commanding the tide. He parked up less than fifteen feet out of the range of the last camera. Wherever he went he walked from there, but judging from his nightly perambulations, that didn't mean it was close. It also suggested that could be part of the reason surveillance lost him if he was on foot and he was looking for a car.

I went over the tapes again and again and again, but nothing. He had vanished completely, but then reappeared. I went to the area and checked it, there was nothing. I checked blue prints and maps and there was nothing. I moved the camera so it covered where he parked his car, his car was there at the time to make sure, and then went back to see what direction he took the next day.

Weiss had a mission that night. I missed the opportunity to bug him by seconds when he jumped back out of range. I very nearly asked him where it was that he went and how he got there? I hadn't realised just how much it irritated me until I saw him, jumping out of range with his sword in the saya. He wasn't wearing his trench coat and he looked long and slender, all in black apart from his hair. He looked very young and very dangerous. He snarled at me, and I couldn't help but think of him like a snippy pet, all snarls and teeth but with no real bite. My surveillance was so complete I could pick him off anywhere after noon, or in his car on the way to the blank spot. He commanded a tactical retreat as did I. We didn't regard Weiss as dangerous, they were lucky and they were stubborn, but no real threat.

Although following the mission we didn't get back till gone three, and they had further to drive I didn't go to bed, and went to the last camera that recorded him at ten past six and followed him. He didn't deliberately stay out of the way of the cameras, the path he took was the quickest and the easiest. He went to a traditional house where the door was opened for him he went in, escorted by a middle aged matron, and about two hours later he was led out by an old man. There was no hint whatsoever what went on behind the wall. The name plate said Tamakurai, which revealed nothing, blue prints and maps revealed nothing. I hadn't expected it to annoy me as much as it had.

I took to surveilling the house, I rented out a room in a house facing it and recorded everyone in and everyone out. I stopped off twice a day to change and collect the tapes. He spent time within that house every day and was always met at the door by a middle aged woman and let out by an old man. Through out the day the middle aged woman escorted children and young men in and out. The middle aged woman was a servant of some kind, and following her revealed nothing. The old man never left the house. Research showed it to be a kind of private school though what it taught I could only guess, entrance was only by invitation. However there was more than one way to skin an Abyssinian.

I crept into the garden around five am, drugged the man's lazy old dog, and waited. The answer was so obvious I very nearly groaned but that would have alerted both Abyssinian and his sensei to my presence. It was a kendo dojo. He came here to practise his sword craft daily. It answered so many questions and I felt an idiot for not realising sooner. I had been surveilling him for seven months but this was the first time I had ever really watched him. He was as graceful as his namesake cat, long clear limbs that moved like water through first tai chi to warm his muscles and then a long hard sword battle with a little old man who appeared to be made of some kind of elastic. He wore traditional robes in a pale grey and his feet were bare. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. The only motions he made that were uncontrolled was the swing of his red hair. I had answered the question and in doing so had set myself a thousand more.

I had to steel myself to look away from the white skin on his forearms as his shirt rode up. I had seen him with a sword many times but this was the first time I wasn't on the wrong end of it, I would be if he saw me, but only if he saw me. The bend of his feet as he lunged and parried and thrusted and turned was intoxicating. The flick of his red hair in that pale coloured room. The look of determination on his face. I had to keep perfectly still or he would hear me, I was armed and so was he, but that wasn't what this was about.

The old man was keeping his ground firmly. He was neither giving nor taking slack. He was as rubbery as a gum tree and although he was small and wrinkled he was more than a match for Abyssinian. He was working him hard, forcing him back again and again. Abyssinian was frowning, then raised his hand, put down him wooden sword and rolled his shoulders, looking out almost exactly at me. I swear he almost looked me clear in the eye, but he obviously didn't see me or he would have reacted, then he lifted the sword again, and began the fight anew. Each step was almost perfectly choreographed, the sensei didn't need to say anything, the only advantage he had over Abyssinian was his years of experience. Abyssinian had youth, vigour, strength, and beauty. I caught myself at that thought. He was an annoyance, like a buzzing fly, buzzing flies were not beautiful, they were swatted. His hair was flung across his face, his mouth open, his eyes narrowed down to slits, I was close enough I could hear him panting.

I had to get out of here, and fast. It was becoming hard to think, harder to remain objective. I crawled away from the door until I well out of sight, and hopped over the wall, but not before I tucked a camera with a digital relay on the frame of the paper doors.

I found myself a small local restaurant and ordered coffee. My hands were actually shaking as if he was someone that scared me. The truth was I scared myself. He was beautiful, I ran over our previous meetings in my mind as I sipped the scalding black coffee, ignoring the pretty waitress and her cautious employer, had he always been beautiful under that scowl and scream of Shi-ne. Had his skin always glowed like that, like a pearl or some other gemstone. No he had been Abyssinian, an annoyance, and then he began his kata. Part of me wanted to go back to the dojo and gun him down and rid myself of the annoyance, the other remembered his face as he practised, the look of intense concentration, the way his hair was slicked to his forehead, the way his mouth was slightly open. I checked my watch, it was nearly eight. How long had I watched him, and had I lost him when I panicked.

Part of me knew it wouldn't matter, one of two things would come of this, one he hadn't seen me and he would go back to the shop and carry on letting my surveillance pick him up again, or two he would come and find me, and nothing would happen in a crowded place. I wanted to tell myself that I found this restaurant for that reason, but really I just needed a coffee to calm my nerves. He was not my enemy, that was too good for him, he was a fly in the ointment, a spanner in the works, nothing more, but somewhere when he practised with his wooden sword he had become more, he had become human to me.

I looked at the muffin the pretty waitress put in front of me, for a whole moment trying to remember if I had ordered it. It looked like something I would eat, a gaijin breakfast, it was studded with blueberries. I didn't want it. I pushed it away, leaving more than enough money for coffee, muffin and a healthy tip on the table. Then got out.

I went to the safe house as soon as I could. Prodigy sat on the couch with a hand held game bleeping and flashing away at him. He looked up when I came in, "Out all night, Crawford?" He asked.

"I went out this morning." I told him, part of me wanted to take that whirring bleeping contraption and stick it up his nose, what right did he have to mock me? "I ate out."

"Oh," he said and went back to button bashing with abandon. When he lost his concentration to the game cups rattled in the cupboards, when he lost they shattered. Nevertheless cups were easier to replace than he was. He was Prodigy, he was Schwartz. It was a bearable price to pay, and better than drinking out of plastic cups. "Anything nice?"

It was too early in the morning for conversation, didn't teenage boys sleep constantly, I know I had when I got the opportunity at his age, but not Prodigy, he just pushed the buttons on that infernal machine or in the space room and made the world obey. I wondered if he did sleep at all. "A coffee, and a muffin."

"You should have asked me." He said, "I like muffins, was it blueberry?" If I had have thought I would have brought it back for him, he may have been small and abnormally active for his age, but he ate enough for four.

"It wasn't very nice," I told him, I hadn't even tried it. "And I didn't think you'd be up. I went for a walk very early."

"Finding Abyssinian's blind spot?" I blinked, I knew I had set Prodigy the start of the surveillance, but I didn't think the annoyance had filtered that far just yet.

"A kendo dojo." I told him bluntly running the tap into the coffee pot for more coffee, maybe I was coming down with something but I couldn't seem to stop shaking.

"Aah," he said, "sometimes you really can't see the wood for the trees." He turned off the console and put it down meticulously on the side of the table, so it was exactly parallel to the edge, "I put it down to a Kritiker safe house or something."

"I didn't even think of that." I told him, "I bugged it," Why was I telling him this, he was Prodigy, he was Schwartz but that hardly made him privy to my innermost thoughts.

"I would have too," he said, "the more we know about Abyssinian's technique the better to counter it."

I agreed as I made the coffee. "Have you eaten?" I asked changing the subject. He shook his head, the others wouldn't be up for hours yet and he normally cooked for everyone. "Get your coat." I told him, he actually looked shocked. I couldn't remember ever taking him out before, but that hadn't meant that I hadn't, it just made it very unlikely that I had. "I'm just antsy," I told him using the American word, "and you look like you could eat a horse, stable and all." He looked at me very suspiciously, "I'll even pay." He got his coat.

Prodigy can be disconcerting, he looks like a child, sometimes he even acts like a child and then he looks at you and all sense of his childhood vanishes. He plans meticulously, he executes complex strategies. Of us all he is the most suited to Schwartz, Mastermind is temperamental and can be frustratingly weak at times, Berserker is difficult to control and impossible to stop. Prodigy looks as innocent as a baby and then when he gets the opportunity he will do it and your heart is crushed and he hasn't moved a muscle, but still managed to rifle your pockets. Sometimes he is very young, and sometime I look into his big blue eyes and I consider the options I am presented with. He is dangerous, as dangerous as any of us, if not more so, but sometimes he is only eighteen and very small for his age. He is home tutored, at a separate safe house, because of issues he had at school.

Sometimes I want company and he is easier managed than the others. Something changed in me this morning and I don't like it. There is a café down the street from our safe-house. Its convenient. I open the door and Prodigy glides in, he is never over energetic, he just doesn't sleep. He sits at a table and waits for me as I hang my coat on the back of the chair. "Kawaii," a woman says looking at us, "are you out with your papa?" She asks prodigy.

He raises an eyebrow, "no, he's my employer and together we're part of an international conglomerate of assassins."

The woman looks mortified although he told her the truth. "There's no need to be rude, young man." She tells him going back to her own table.

I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy watching that. I didn't laugh, that would be the last straw, but I enjoyed it. "I don't know, Tousan," he says for the woman's benefit. "People today."

"Order what you like," I tell him handing him the menu, "as much as you like," he raises a single thin eyebrow, "I told you, I'm paying."

I call the waitress over and order coffee, I even lower my glasses to look at her over the rims and explain that the young man is to have everything he desires. She coughs. This kind of mind game suddenly isn't fun anymore. Prodigy orders enough food for a small army, mostly sweet.

"I trust that you're not feeding me out of some kind of parental responsibility." He asks.

"Of course not," I tell him, pushing my glasses back up my nose to look at him clearly. "it is inefficient for you to pass out of malnutrition at certain inopportune times from eating someone's cooking." We are always careful of the words that we choose if we talk about work, but Mastermind's cooking is, even internally I carefully choose my words, educational, hearty and filling, but German. If Berserker gets in the kitchen, he cooks everything in fat, including his own hands usually. In a moment of lucidity he told me of the four Irish food groups, bacon; beans; whiskey and lard.

He is not a telepath like Mastermind but he can tell what I'm thinking, what I am avoiding thinking. "I should learn to cook," he says, "perhaps we can slot in lessons, Far shouldn't really be let loose with those kitchen knives."

I smile at him, he treats the gesture as suspiciously as I would, "it is the blood pudding that disturbs me most."

He smiles back, my little ally. "He will eat anything." He concedes as his food arrives, "but I'm sure its not really blood in blood pudding," he says biting into a sausage with obvious delight. He's enjoying his food too much for me to contradict him. "Can I have some coffee?" He asks.

"No." I tell him, "it will stunt your growth. Have some tea."

He frowns around the sausage. "Schu lets me drink coffee." He says.

"Schu calls you Naggles," I remind him, "and I'm sure you don't want me to start that."

He agrees to the tea which I order for him. "Is this about the surveillance?" He asks dipping his sausage into the runny yolk of his egg and then into a blob of tomato sauce on his plate before biting into it.

I blink, caught unawares. He is the only other that knows about it, but even he doesn't know what I saw this morning, what I can still see. His skin is so white. "What makes you say that?"

"You're antsy," he repeats my word, "you were doing that this morning, you never do this." He looks at the table. He's clever, sometimes I forget that. "Maybe you'd be better off going to the gym and working off some of that tension, or maybe going to the range." I look at him surprised at what is actually a very good idea. "Did something happen?"

"I nearly got spotted planting the camera." I blurt out, a small truth to cover the whole truth, the image of Abyssinian with his head flung back, his hair across his cheek, his mouth open.

"Clumsy." He chides gently, cutting his bacon, teasing me the way I would scold him. He is in a very good mood and I can't say that I trust it. "He's handsome though when he's not in a death glare."

I practically spray coffee over him in shock. The look that he gives me is conspiratorial, "you must have noticed, taking over surveillance like that, he's scary but that doesn't stop him being hot. I mean if he wasn't Weiss I'd throw myself at him, listen to me, I'm like a proper fan boy." He smiles to himself almost a little shyly. "Believe me, everyone but you noticed."

"I've never seen him without the look of determination." I tell him blithely.

He quirks that eyebrow again, the ketchup skids across the table, "I believe you." He says somewhat sarcastically, "but I have more interesting tapes than you think."

It's my turn to raise an eyebrow. "They're not cheap." He reassures me, and that sounds like Prodigy. "I have mission tapes." He said, "and voice recordings."

It's then we talk in earnest.


	2. Drove me coldeyed on tired and sleeples

Part 2

_Drove me cold-eyed on tired and sleepless feet._

I have a conspirator now, a partner in my crime. Nagi sorts out information that I have no care to, receipts and the like. I can tell you the name of every book he has bought in the last eight months, some of which are surprising. He likes American music, preferably with guitars, though never loud. I even bought one of the disks myself after hearing him sing along with it in the car. I imagine he will be mortified if he knew we recorded that. We have the shop, the car, and his apartment bugged. We have cameras in their communal areas, in his bedroom, the only place we have left him privacy is his bathroom, we have no interest in that, yet.

There are cameras in his ceiling, in his light fittings, microphones in everything we can plant them in. Not that he talks much. I told Nagi we needed them to learn about mission information. He has become my own private experiment, I record the business of his life nearly twenty fours a day. He sticks to his pattern almost slavishly. The deviations he cannot plan, those are arranged by Kritiker.

I have started to dream about him. Nagi has tapes of him swimming, his broad shoulders and thin waist cutting through the water carefully with practised strokes, his head twisting around to come up for air. There is even footage of him running, he is wearing an open sweat top and pants, he is even wearing headphones and a baseball cap as he tails his target through the park. Even when he runs he has the same stillness and grace. I think I might be becoming obsessed. He is a creature of habit, of constraint, but then I watch him on the webcam we have set up, and he is reading, his legs stuck up the wall and the book resting on his abdomen and he surprises me.

I have taken to wiring up the feed directly to the larger television I have bought for my room so I can watch him better. The picture quality is poor but that doesn't quite matter, yet. He is sitting in the communal area of the Kitty in the House, legs hooked over the back of the sofa and he is reading poetry in English. The sound catches me unawares, and I rewind the feed, it is recorded even as I watch, he laughs again. It is just a snort, an unexplained exhalation of amusement, but his mouth quirks up and he smiles, then the smile grows a little bigger, and he closes the book around his finger and reads back the lines, clearly enunciating them as he stares at directly where the camera is hidden, as if he knows where it is. "As never fool for love, I starved for you; My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see. Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view, And your remembered smell most agony.1"

I had to move, to get away from the screen, it was almost like he was playing with me, like he knew I was watching. I turn the screen off, then on again, then off, then I cross the room and try to pour myself some water, I only succeed in soaking my hand I'm shaking that badly, I turn the screen on again, its gone back to real-time, he's got up and got himself a drink. I rewind back to the words and copy them out to a piece of paper.

He can't know we're filming him. He can't. He wouldn't tolerate it, he would destroy the clock that conceals the camera with a Shi-ne. He certainly wouldn't read poetry to it, would he?

That question stops me at the door.

I recompose myself, no, he wouldn't, especially not poetry like that. I go into the safe-house kitchen and pour myself coffee, its probably the last thing I need, but it seems to calm my nerves. Mastermind looks at me enquiringly as I knock back an entire mug of hot black coffee, then pull a face. It's been sat for far too long. "Something bothering you, Brad-brad?" He asks.

"No," I tell him sharply, "just a conundrum, nothing you could help with."

"You're wound as tight as a guitar string." He tells me, I can't help but agree as I think of the amusement on Abyssinian's face as he looks directly at the camera_ "and your remembered smell most agony_."

"Is Nagi about?" I ask.

"No," Mastermind replies, "he's gone to get some game for his console, it came out today, he said he'd be back later. What are the pair of you up to?"

"Surprise Christmas present." I tell him dryly.

"It would be a surprise," he says, "it's only September." His hair is green this weak, a horrible washed out green that looks murky, but he likes it. It's been this colour before, but not for a long time. "So really, what are you two up to?"

"I'm his shotakon," I answer, cutting off any more comments.

"And you never invited me to play." He's mock hurt, the answer seems to have settled him and he's gone back to watching the film he had on, something about a woman and nudity, it seems all his German films contain far too much nudity. She's running. Mastermind is more intent on watching her breasts bounce under her blue grey vest than the plot.

"Schuldig, what do you know about poetry?" I ask surprising myself, sometimes people surprise you with what they know.

"It rhymes." He said, then thought about it, "it's supposed to be the language of the soul." That sounded like he might know about it, "it's poetry, why?"

"Would you recognise a quote?" I ask him, "or know where to find one?"

"Why?" The woman's breasts are bouncing, and his pupils are bouncing with them, but he can talk to me.

"Something popped into my head and its not going to leave me alone until I know where from." I lie.

"I hate it when that happens, are you sure it's not something from the radio? I find most of it is played on the alarm when you're waking up." That sounds quite intelligent, as if he has given some thought to the matter.

"No, it's from a poem, as never fool for love I starved for you."

"Why Bradley," he says looking at me with his hands cupped under his chin, "I never knew you cared."

It's all I can do not to smash that smirk off his face with my fist, "if you're not going to help." I say turning.

"Sorry," he says almost mockingly, "I don't know it, never heard it, look it up on a search engine, you might get lucky." Then he turns back to his voluptuous fraulein with the bouncing bosoms, "ja, run, Lola, run."

His suggestion might be a good one, I type in an American search engine and then the English lyrics, just the first line, looking at the list I get, I try another search with the second line. Kami-sama, I mutter under my breath, there are some deviants on the Internet. I type in all four lines and hope, I don't hold out much hope though when the search engine brings up fifty six pages about war poetry. I close the page.

I can see him lying with his back on the sofa seat with his legs hooked over the back, the book closed on his chest, "as never fool for love, I starved for you." He says, his voice throaty and deep. I physically groan and surprise myself, where did that come from? I look around to make sure no one saw, but I am alone in the computer room. Is there anyone who would know what the book was, if only I could see the cover I could find the book.

I go back to my room, hoping Mastermind is engrossed enough in Lola running that he doesn't notice my confusion, or the fact it must show that I feel so hot. The first thing I do after I lock the door is take off my shirt and tie, my skin is cooking, and pull on a tee that I use at the gym. Even I own several battered sports tees. I thumb the remote to see what he's doing, but he's not in any of the kitty in the house rooms, I check his schedule, its too early for a late evening walk and he's not working. He's missing.

Then he walks out of the bathroom on the upper floor and my heart starts again. He has a tooth brush hanging out of his mouth, chewing on the bristles. I have never noticed that he did that. Suddenly my pants feel very tight indeed. He is wearing a black sleeveless polo neck and a pair of very tight black jeans, the top button of his button fly is undone. It really is very warm in here, I have to fan myself before I turn up the air con.

I turn on the communal room camera looking for the book, but he is too meticulous, whatever it was its tucked away on his shelf. He's in his bedroom. He might be changing. Its another of those surprise thoughts that catch me unawares when I think of him. He is Abyssinian, he is an annoyance, more of an annoyance than I want him to be, but the look of smugness on his face as he repeated back those mocking lines of poetry.

He's not changing, I don't think I could really cope with that right now. Part of me wonders if surveillance has shifted, I no longer record what he does with dispassion, I record everything he does meticulously, as meticulous as he is, but not with dispassion now. I never remember my dreams of him, only that I dream of him.

He has put headphones on, and is dancing around the room, he is in a very good mood, I wish I knew why. It pains me that I don't know why. That again surprises me. I need to understand this. The view of him is better if I angle the camera to catch his reflection. If I try to focus the camera on him I can see the top of his head, but his reflection in the mirror captures him from just above his head to about half way down his thighs. He is not vain, he hardly ever uses the mirror, its just part of the room's decor, but it helps me.

I can't hear the music that he has chosen, his face is a little flushed, perhaps he has been drinking, I could wind the tape back to check, but its still only afternoon. He is dancing in time to whatever he is listening to. The song is slow and patient and he moves his hips in time to them, his hands on his ear phones to crowd the music in further, he is humming along, and I groan again. His back is to the mirror so I can see his tight ass wiggling in his far too tight jeans. I don't think I've ever been as aroused in my life, and I daren't deny it in case I explode. There is a terrible tightness in my nose, I think I am going to have a nose bleed. He is all in black, the room is dark, and I can see the white flashes of his arms and the flicker of his blood red hair. Kami sama, I could make a fortune with this with those deviants on the Internet, what would they pay for this? What would I pay for this. Nagi's tapes alone cost me nearly ten thousand yen.

He casts his head back and turns, baring the white skin on his throat, his eyes are closed, his mouth open and he sways side to side with his hips, his shoulders working in counterpoint, "I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal.2" I hear the line quite deliberately as what can only described as erotic shock hits me so hard I actually lose my balance. I sit in front of the TV, legs splayed to ease the pain of an erection I can't explain and most of my weight on my hands behind me. "born again from the rhythm, screaming down from heaven, ageless, ageless and I'm there in your arms."

"Jesus almighty," I actually swear out loud, I'm close to turning the screen off again, but not quite close enough to do anything about it. The song is getting faster, as he's turned, he's yanked the plug from the socket as he's moved, an accident, so although he wears headphones the music is playing. I don't know the song, I don't know the artist, but I have the suspicion I'm never going to get away from this song, this dancer. There is a minor crescendo and I gasp and my head falls back, and then jerks forward quickly in case I miss something.

His rhythm has slowed to the song again, his eyes are closed and his lips are sticky and wet. "The welts of your scorn, my love give me more, send whips of opinion down my back, give me more."

"Sweet god in heaven," I am able to gasp as I come powerfully against my will without even being touched, without even undoing my trousers. I fall back, satiated as he continues to sing along with the strange song by the artist I have never heard or heard of. That has never happened before.

As soon as I have the strength, which takes longer than I would like, I roll over and crawl to the bathroom where I do my best to shower. I'm wiped out. It's like someone undid my power supply. I'm like a character in one of Nagi's games, limping on with no real power. I haven't turned the screen off and he's still singing and dancing, just to another song, I am doing my best to ignore him, though I can hear him, but can't see him in the bathroom.

I'm trying to find some calm, something that will make sense of what the hell happened. Actually what happened was pretty obvious, I'm trying to make sense of why the hell it happened. He is an annoyance, an utterly fuckable annoyance who moves as sleekly as a cat. I should drive down to the Kitty in the house, take my magnum and plant a lump of lead in his head. That would rid me of the annoyance once and for all.

I haven't the strength to drive, and shaking the way I am I'd probably just shoot the mirror behind him. I am still physically shaking. I have to control him, that idea makes sense, because if I can control him, I can control myself again.

He has lain down on his bed, and dispensed with his headphones, his jeans are almost all the way open now. I can't help but feel that he is toying with me, that he knows how intently I watch him. One arm is under his head and the other across his chest, his bedding is a pale grey and against it his skin is creamy. He is as lost in the music as I am in him. Part of me wants to check the manifest of his shopping to find out who the man who sings like an angel is, he sings in English and he has the most amazing range. The music is discordant now, clanging guitar noises, as if the musician has lost all control as well, then falls silent. "I love you," he says in time to the singer "but I'm afraid to love you." Oh god, I murmur, not again, "I love you," and deeply breathy, a whisper I wouldn't hear if not for the microphone in his headboard, "but I'm afraid to love you."

I turn off the screen and do my best to catch my breath. A second erection is tenting up the front of my towel. I'm actually dizzy. I have to go back into the bathroom and attend to this before I can think, but I find myself imagining the hand moving on my cock is not mine, it's his, Aya's. His long white thin hands holding me like he holds his katana, his grip tight his wrist loose. I come in an agonised sputter gasping as I do.

I have decided, I am just going to shoot him.

I go for a walk, not turning the screen back on. I think the autumn air will calm me somewhat. Or maybe vodka, lots of vodka. I have a vision before I go into the ochaya3 where I had every intention of hiring a prostitute and drinking myself sick. Most visions serve a defined and definite purpose, they warn me of danger, of things to avoid. I saw myself surrounded by cats, not expensive cats, just cats, cats upon cats upon cats and I was content. I didn't like the vision, I think I preferred the one where Aya cut me in two. God he was even in my visions now.

I went back to the safe house knowing that we were going to get a call from that ignorant prick that Mastermind had running the Shinjuku yakuza on his behalf, asking for more money, or manpower. I would just get Mastermind to eviscerate him to make an example of him. Or maybe even just mention calmly to a Kritiker employer that the man had a thing for little girls, the littler the better, even though he didn't. Two birds with one stone involved there, I could see mission Aya as hard as stone with his katana in his hands and that yakuza cleft in two a splatter of blood on his face, as red as his hair. I ruled that idea out with a curse, even solutions to problems were infested with that annoying... I had to stop there.

When I got in I flopped down on the sofa to join Nagi watching a documentary, surely documentaries were safe viewing for the moment. A nice safe documentary on lizards. When the phone rang I told Mastermind it was for him, and I wanted the yakuza destroyed as he was irritating me.

Nagi looked at me quizzically, but said nothing. I decided to ask him about the poem. "Nagi, what do you know about poetry?"

"Enough," He answered, "are we talking haiku, sonnet, ballad, epic?"

"Not a clue, just have four rhyming lines stuck in my head." I told him, "and nothing short of murder is going to shift them if I can't find out where they're from."

"Shoot." He said, "if I recognise them, I'll tell you."

"As never fool for love I starved for you, My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see. Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view, And your remembered smell most agony."

He thought about it, "its in rhyming couplets, in an AB AB scheme, I'd say it was a sonnet, petrarchan probably, read them again." I did and he counted down on his fingers the rhythm, "its in iambic pentameter, that should make it a bit easier to find on the Internet."

"I wish I had an idea what you just said." Mastermind said from the phone, "its like you were talking another language."

"What do you know about poetry?" Nagi asked him.

"Ich habe genossen das irdische gluck." Mastermind answered in German.

Not one to be outdone, Nagi finished the quote. "Ich habe gelebt and geleibt.4" His expression didn't change, "Schiller, impressive. Except the most famous quote by Schiller, and in German, which would be impressive if you weren't German."

"Shut it, Snaggletooth." Mastermind murmured.

Nagi ignored him. "I imagine when you looked it up you got sites like " I nodded.

"It sounds old, but I've never heard it before, I'll look it up on university sites for you, write it down for me. But at a guess I'd say it was a sonnet which narrows the field a bit."

"Where did you learn so much about poetry?" I asked him.

"From that hyper expensive tutor you got me." He replies blithely.

I turn back to the documentary, the lizards, called Jesus Lizards because they run on water, have managed to stick their stomachs together and are rolling around on the sand. "Now they're mating," Nagi complains, "why is it there is nothing but sex on this television."

"Every six seconds," Berserker says quietly, he was sat so still and medicated I hadn't even noticed him, not a good state of affairs with Berserker.

"Pardon?" Nagi asks him.

"The human male thinks of sex every six seconds." He repeats lucidly.

"He's right," Mastermind says with his hand over the phone microphone as the Yakuza complains in his ear, "and it took six seconds from big breasted girls blowing donkeys to the lizards."

I almost laugh. "I'm going to my room." I say getting up. "Schuldig, kill that annoying little gangster, Nagi make sure you do your homework, and you, Farfarello," I try to think what to say to him, "just do what you're doing."

"Are you all right?" Mastermind asks.

"I think I might be coming down with a fever." I reply tersely.

"Do you want some dinner?" Nagi asks.

"I don't know." I reply and then lock the door to my room and switched on the television. I had to flick between cameras to find him in the communal room with the rest of Weiss, the little one, Bombay, was cooking, and they were chattering. The oldest one, Balinese, was teasing Siberian about some soccer team, and Aya was laughing as he was talking about the sport. Siberian was getting annoyed by what was practised mistakes about a sport he worshipped obsessively. He was laughing. Someone else was making him laugh. He wasn't laughing for the cameras, he was laughing at them, with them, for them.

I was instantly aggressively possessive. He was mine.

* * *

1 Rupert Brooke, Lust, possibly one of the sexiest poems ever written, to rub the joke in, Rupert Brooke was a war poet so he probably did find the poem. It's the poem that prefaces the story so the more observant of you will realise that there will be 14 lines as it's a sonnet.

2 Jeff Buckley Mojo Pin

3 A japanese tea room, these tend to have prostitutes on call and act like very formal bars.

4 A very famous quote by Schiller, one of two quotes I can do in German, it means I have tasted the fullness of earthly bliss, I have lived and I have loved.


	3. Night was void arms and you a phantom st...

Part 3

_Night was void arms and you a phantom still,_

I had started to follow him. Maybe the day after I saw him laughing, maybe the day after that. I can't remember. I have Polaroid photos stuck to my walls, no one comes in here, I can have all the shrine I want in the apartment I rented across from his dojo. I have accepted the word shrine. It took a while. I asked Nagi what you call those fan sites on the Internet. He said they were shrines.

Some in-depth bribing and threatening within Kritiker turned up some old photos of Aya with a burly blonde man where is wearing a long black coat covered in buckles and a white scarf around his thigh. His hair was long. I came very close to having them framed. He looked younger in them, slightly harder edged as well. The friend he goes out with is called Honjyou, I knew that anyway, now I know where from. They were together in one of Kritiker's non lethal, less annoying, groups before he joined Weiss.

I had known that, but never looked into it, the photos however interested me greatly. He had become softer in his time in Weiss, it had been nearly five years now all in all. Even Bombay was starting to look grown up. He was just a teenager in these photos, young and naïve. I really had to get myself another hobby.

Anything.

I hear macramé is relaxing. I had a vision of myself knitting and surrounded by cats. What was this sudden problem with cats in my visions, hundreds and hundreds of common or garden variety cats, seething upon each other. I don't even like cats. So why did I keep seeing myself content buried up to the eyebrows in cats, and knitting.

I looked around the apartment, at the shelves of disks of footage. This really wasn't healthy. I could give up at any time, really I can, honest. I keep telling myself that.

The boy, I stop myself he's not a boy anymore, no more than I am, the man intoxicates me. I can tell you anything about him, his favourite flavour of ice cream is pistachio, but failing that he prefers vanilla over one of the sweeter flavours. He likes sugared cones. He buys crepes with strawberry syrup. His favourite dish is natto, and his favourite sweater is that vile orange polo neck. He likes imported beers, preferably European, and likes his Sake warm. He drinks jack on the rocks with diet Pepsi, he's particular about that, no Pepsi and he'll drink it as straight as it comes. Vodka he has with cranberry and grapefruit in a cocktail called a seabreeze. Gin he has with lemon and tonic, he likes that in the summer in the afternoon. He writes bad poetry and short stories that he publishes under a pseudonym, they are very well received and actually very good. He likes books with unhappy endings and his favourite book is "The Good Soldier1" by Ford Madox Ford. I haven't read it yet.

His favourite movie is "The Princess Bride" which surprised me, he doesn't read manga often, but when he does they tend to come highly recommended. If he watches a film it's usually subtitled, he goes to the expensive theatre across town that shows arthouse flicks. His favourite live house though he doesn't go there much anymore is Zepp Tokyo2. He wears Obsession for men aftershave at night, but smells of flowers during the day. I could rival any of his fan girls for information. More than once when one of them has clung to his arm in the shop I have to seriously stop myself from putting a magnum round in her head. I am jealous.

He wears size twenty six jeans, which is girlishly tiny, and buys his socks from a very expensive department store. He has his trench coat privately dry cleaned, which is expensive, and more than once I have nearly broken in and stolen it. He doesn't dance often, but when he does he is a god. He knows the Victorian language of flowers, a piece of information that surprised me before I realised it was perfectly in his nature to know that, and he sends money to his sister in France once a month. He has a very hefty savings account in his name and one in hers, in case of emergencies. He sells short stories under a pseudonym to a popular woman's magazine.

I feel like a stalker.

I suppose I am.

This is getting out of hand.

A hobby, I really need a hobby, painting maybe.

Or collecting cats, I think dryly remembering my vision, or knitting. Or collecting cats and knitting.

I am yet to find out the name of the poem, Nagi had little more luck than I did, we weren't even sure it was in English, and the album he had sung along to I had no idea of. Even with much improved cinema when I scanned his CDs I couldn't tell which one it was. Although I was able to guess which ones it wasn't. I had it narrowed down to a list of twenty or more.

He has a mission tonight. An easy one, a Yakuza who calls himself the White Snake has risen up outside of our control and has put four boys under ten in the hospital by testing street drugs on them. I'd deal with it myself but we do leave some for Kritiker, just in case we need them later. He's going to put his coat on! I can't hide my excitement. I nearly stole that coat just so he would put the far more interesting Crashers one on instead. Hmmmm.

I got up off the floor again. Maybe I needed counselling, that was why I kept lying back on the floor and sighing.

I watched his film, well more specifically, I watched him watching his favourite film and the camera was angled so I could see the screen. He doesn't have a TV in his room, he watched it in the communal area, there was a line in it that intrigued me, "life is pain, princess, anyone who tells you any different is trying to sell you something." I could see why he liked the film, I couldn't figure out why he loved it, but I could see why he liked it. He read the script alongside it, driving everyone else out of the room. He laughed at it, even as he said the jokes in time. I wonder if he sees himself as the man in black with his sword. Whether he has ever fenced in front of his mirror with a bandanna and mask and his katana. I like that idea as well.

I think I really need counselling.

He still performs for the camera.

I have accepted him as my fantasy figure. I still don't remember my dreams of him, but I have a pretty good idea they're similar if not the same as my day dreams. In my daydreams his mouth is pepper mint fresh and hot against mine and his skin chill. I imagine myself kissing him senseless. I started watching him to work out the best way to kill him, and now, I know exactly the best way to kill him, I have every intention of fucking him till his heart explodes.

Maybe Berserker's doctors...

This is out of hand. I know the only way to control myself now is to control him.

I have developed a twitch. My eye has a tendency to try to wink at people without my consent. I have assigned it to stress and the other members of Schwartz have accepted it as that, it doesn't stop Mastermind winking back. The Yakuza is an annoyance at best, he works out of a small bar not far from the sunshine sixty building. I have it wired. Schwartz has no interest in this man, other than our usual professional courtesy such as it is. Nevertheless I walked straight through the front door, they knew who I was and left me be, to await the show.

Weiss are so theatrical. It's so kawaii.

The lights went out and then a spotlight found our poor erstwhile Yakuza, then four tiny little darts appeared just above his head and as he stumbled to his feet a second spotlight found Aya, haloing him. I very nearly groaned, it made him even paler and his hair shine. "We are Weiss," he said, "shi-ne!", I nearly swooned and then he cut his head off, quick as you like and then spotted me.

I had made no attempt to hide.

He looked me clear in the eye and I spread my hands as if to tell him I had nothing to do with this, and no interest in what happened here. I even lifted my drink, which was nothing but tonic water and waved them away. I really had no interest in this self proclaimed White Snake. I had come to watch Aya. He looked puzzled and I sighed and tapped the side of my head, suggesting I had a vision, I hadn't, my surveillance is exquisite, I didn't need to. "I don't understand you, Schwartz." He said, his voice deep, and he was addressing me, nor had he put his katana away I hasten to point out.

"If you hadn't dealt with him, I would have." I replied tersely. "No harm no foul. Away you go. I have no interest in you in this matter." The lie felt thick in my throat. My sole interest in this was him. I shooed him away with my hand, but he looked puzzled. "We're even on the same side in this one." I told him as the spotlight found what puzzled their leader. "I'm going to finish my drink and leave, you're welcome to join me." I said.

"You are Schwartz." He said in a way that translated as you are my enemy, you will always be my enemy.

"You have blood on your face." I replied handing him a napkin from the table. He wiped it away angrily. He even muttered a thank you. "I told you, our missions coincide at this point, nothing more." I slid my glasses down my nose in my most seductive stare. "You could even say we were allies at this point."

"Don't push it, Oracle." He said, sheathing his katana in its saya.

"If I wanted you dead you and your friends would be dead." I reassured him, I took another drink of my tonic water. "Are you sure you won't join me?"

"Clean up will be here within the hour." He said. "I would suggest leaving before then." And then he turned on his heel and left in a swirl of his black coat. I was instantly reminded, of all people, of Darth Vader in Star Wars. I didn't like the film, it was too cut and dried, but a female friend admitted once that everything was about Han Solo until she started to really pay attention to Darth Vader's cape3. She was very drunk when she admitted it and denied it the next morning, but hell that cape is sexy, I'm sure that's why Dracula gets so many girls, and Batman. That coat is really just a cape.

I left about five minutes after he did to give the impression I wasn't following him, well it felt like five minutes, it might have been as little as thirty seconds. I didn't bother to check my watch. Then I stopped into another bar across the road and drank myself senseless.

He is so hot. How did I miss that for four years?

Even with the death glare he is really sexy. Hell, the death glare makes him sexy. The death glare, the katana and the coat would probably make anyone sexy, but his shoulders are broad, and his waist and hips are so small I could probably wrap one hand around them. I could eat him up with a spoon and strawberry syrup the colour of his hair.

The surveillance has gone on for nine months now.

Nagi has started to worry for me. That is never good. I remembered his birthday, well the anniversary of him joining Schwartz and got him a gift, a game he said he wanted and hadn't bought yet. We have decided that he is nineteen now. Mastermind suspects he has a girlfriend, I don't press him, he doesn't press me, that suits us well enough for now. He appears to be a little taller, Mastermind measured him against the mark on the safe house frame from when we came to Tokyo, there is at least an inch difference. He will always be small, but he may still have a growth spurt and end as tall as me or Mastermind. If I am father then Mastermind is mother.

I took Nagi out to an ochaya and got him very drunk and arranged for a very exclusive prostitute for him. I was glad to do it. I stayed over, one of the advantages of owning most of the underworld, and thought about the mission the night before, at how he had sheathed the katana. Now if there is a symbol replete with Freudian double meaning that would be it. He couldn't have known I was watching him, could he?

I kept imagining him laying over the back of the couch where he had been reading, asleep, the top button on his jeans undone and one hand flung over his eyes and the other on his chest, on the book of poetry he was reading. The strange American CD was playing in the back. His hair was flung across his cheek, his face turned to the side, and slightly flushed, and his mouth open so that I could see the tip of his pink tongue. He never sleeps in the communal area so it really is just wishful thinking on my part. Part of me wants him to bring someone home so I can observe that, then the other half of me wants to cut out the part that thought up that particular perversion. He is mine. I need to make him mine. If I make him mine then I will regain control.

I have watched the mission tape over and over again. I must admit it made me hot when he came at me with that sword knowing that he wouldn't bring it against me. Part of me wants to fuck him when he holds the sword, the other part of me knows perfectly well what he'd do with it. When he goes out he has a knife in his boot and another at the small of his back. I am no different, but I wear a magnum as well. We are assassins, its expected.

It has been too long.

I try to remember with my usual fastidiousness how long it has been since I took a lover, and excluding the one in my dreams it has been nearly three years. Definitely too long. Except he has spoiled me for any one else. If I take a lover I will imagine him, I would make him dye his hair, avoid the sun till he was as pale, read me English poetry by poets I'd never heard of in that same sexy voice, but it wouldn't be the same, would never be the same, that would rid me of control. If I did that then he would have won. I try to remember when this became a game. When did my little mouse start to play with the cat.

I am going to have to do something about this, soon.

He is meeting his friend tonight, the blonde bear, Honjyou. Again I am struck by useless jealousy, so outside my normal frame of reference I can't think of something to compare it to. I imagine it is like a child who wants something only to see someone else have it and not use it to the best of its potential, of course if Honjyou even tried that I would kill him, resurrect him, and kill him again.

I have a terrible thought that maybe Aya might take a lover. He might have had other lovers before we met, he might not be totally mine. I will have to increase my information, and destroy anyone who might possibly think of taking him from me. who might have took him from me. He is mine, he just doesn't know it yet. I dress myself in black knowing how it makes me look, Mastermind looks up when I leave my room, "the black Karan," he muses, "hot date?"

"Important meeting." I reply tersely.

"Anyone I'd know?" He asks, his hair is blue this week, it doesn't suit him.

"I hope not." I answer checking my appearance in the mirror by the door. I have decided to eschew glasses in favour of contact lenses, it would mean I was less easy to recognise, I may not be ready to pounce just yet, but I didn't want him to pounce either.

"You smell nice." Nagi says from the kitchen, "hot date?"

"Important meeting." I reply telling him the same lie I told Mastermind.

"Don't do anything he wouldn't do." Nagi says flicking a thumb at Mastermind who acts mortally offended. "I'll leave the door on the latch." He assures me, he will be the last one to bed, he always is. I have a half formed thought of foregoing chasing Aya and just bedding Nagi, he's convenient, it wouldn't mean anything and it might regain me a measure of control. No, I tell myself, a measure's not enough. You're not going to be happy, I tell myself, until you nail that man into the floor. "And you look nice. Its strange to see you with contacts."

"It's strange to wear them, Nagi," I tell him. "I shouldn't be out too late, make sure Farfarello takes his medication."

He nods. "Hai, Tousan," he says with a wink and I'm left to wondering when he started to call me that.

I might just have to kill Honjyou. I am considering it, something that doesn't make me look guilty, hell I could gun him down on the street in front of a hundred witnesses and get away with it, but that's not my intention at this juncture. They were sitting in a booth in the bar, he wore a black angora roll neck with no sleeves, probably the one he had been wearing that day when he was reading and a pair of very fine leather gloves to match his leather pants. He looked hotter like that than he had in the traditional robes.

The combination of the scratchy black wool and the leather just about made me turn around and walk back out, though I was in before he was. I arranged myself in the booth behind theirs and listened in on their conversation, recording it for posterity and later analysis.

They had started the evening with a comfortable hug, the blonde was wearing an open necked blue shirt with a white vine detail along one side and a pair of moleskin pants. "It's always so good to see you, Yuuyuu." Aya said.

"I know, this comes far too infrequently, Ranran." He had a private nickname for him. They ordered three drinks making me wonder if I had somehow made a mistake, the three drinks were the same. The waitress queried it, just as I did. "The third glass is for the devil," Honjyou told her, "when you drink to the past you always lay a third glass for the devil." That nearly floored me, I wondered how they'd react if I took it. They were drinking cocktails called black velvets and I didn't want to know what made them as it looked very noxious.4 I ordered vodka and cranberry with shaved ice and listened to them reminisce. That was all they did all night and it became apparent very quickly that the former team mates had been lovers who parted amicably when they just out grew the other. I couldn't imagine out growing him but it had seemed very early that they really had just been fuck buddies more interested in the laughter they shared than the sex. That concept I could vaguely understand, the idea that the shared camaraderie was what had carried over almost made perfect sense, then why did they put out a glass for the devil.

They stayed for a few hours, laughing and joking about mutual friends and their month, they really did tell each other everything, and then Honjyou left him with a kiss on his forehead to go and see his lover, someone called Nao though whether Naoki or Naoko I didn't know. That I couldn't understand. He downed his drink and left. Aya lingered over his for a few minutes, then tilted the glass on the table muttered something I couldn't hear, and then emptied the third drink in a single draught, no mean feat for a pint glass, and left. I knew from past experience, he didn't linger on the way he just went home and slept off the drink.

I followed him by about ten minutes and copied his example I went straight home, but I went straight into the space room and booted up the big computer that was normally Nagi's domain. The ritual was strange enough that it had to have a precedent. Why set out a glass for the devil? Although I knew that Aya was educated I wasn't really prepared for the answer, the ancient assassins, the Hashashin started the practice over a thousand years ago, although they were fanatically devout and believed that they would go to heaven, if they lived long enough to remember the past, they laid a glass out for the devil who obviously kept them from harm. The devil protected those not devout enough to die for god, so he was welcomed at the table5.

There it was, a piece of poetry, singing along to music I had never heard and then the piece d'resistance a gesture of repentance that I understood completely, even if Honjyou was non lethal. I could consider drinking with the devil, hell in most people's eyes I was the devil.

* * *

1 This is a fantastic book about the sexual politics of two married couples and I recommend it to anyone and everyone literally, it's in the public domain now so you can just download it off the internet and it is so worth it.

2 Just an interesting note, the Zepp Tokyo mentioned so often in manga actually exists.

3 Believe it or not this conversation really did happen, but there was a lot of liquor involved and no one's been able to look at Darth Vader in the same light, Anikin Skywalker does not have that effect strangely.

4 A black velvet is champagne and stout, and you either love them or loathe them, I'm category b

5 How cool can rituals get, it gets a bit expensive in bars though.


	4. And day your far light swaying down the ...

Part 4

_And day your far light swaying down the street._

I have decided to seduce him. It wasn't a hard decision to reach, but I had to reach it regardless. I had to decide to overstep the line between hunter and prey and make it mutual. That was the part that I had to decide on, that I wanted it to be mutual. I could have just kidnapped him at any point, slaked my lust, killed him and then dumped his body in the harbour. I could even have completely dismembered him, but I suspected that wouldn't let me regain control. To regain control he has to let me.

At this point it's all about control. It started about surveillance about plotting and planning to react to a possible threat. Then he began to bewitch me. I haven't seen him do anything deliberately bewitching. If I saw him with someone else or move provocatively or anything deliberately sexy I could say he was intending to bewitch me, but there is none of that. He is going about his daily life without changing the patterns in any way. He read back a piece of poetry that amused him, it wasn't his fault that it was so provocative. He had sung along with an album he had owned for some time and knew the words to, it wasn't his fault that I had found that so incredibly mind bogglingly erotic. He drank to the devil because he was an assassin that lived past his time, not that I would find it cute.

He practised Kendo because that was how he killed, not because I would find it hot. He practised with who I had discovered was the best teacher in Tokyo, not because it would intrigue me. He couldn't have known that I was watching, could he? Some of the shows he had put on weren't for my benefit, were they? Surely he always dressed like that when he went to meet Honjyou and not because he had worn that outfit when he had actually made _that_ happen. I didn't really want to linger on the little dance he had done on his bed and what happened when to me when he had.

I don't like losing control like that, it had only happened once before and then I could at least maintain the detail that I was very young and had learnt little control over that aspect of my body. That it had happened since was another matter altogether. That I lusted after him didn't mean that I should have had that reaction without some kind of motivation, had I been touching myself or even imagining him naked I could have understood it, but no. I was watching him but I couldn't have said why. Not then.

I wonder now if it was why I considered him a threat before, not to Schwartz, to my control. I wonder if I always desired him, if I always wanted him. If I always needed to control him. That I repressed it with everything else. Repression is a form of control, one of the most dangerous and therefore the most rewarding. I can no longer repress this desire. I want to be able to repress it, but I can't not any more, or I would have him killed.

I still might.

I have decided to seduce him to regain control, there is no way I would let him maintain control.

This is all about control. It always was.

I am going to get him when he visits Honjyou, when Honjyou leaves for Nao and he downs the drink for the devil. There is a small problem to my plan, just a tiny one, their "date" this month comes a week early because they are going to a concert, a stadium venue and you would not believe the strings I had to pull to get tickets. I also have to research the artist they are going to see, something about building materials. Nagi dealt with the tickets, said he wanted to come to, and when he mentioned it to Mastermind he wanted to come, as surprisingly did Berserker. I said I had no interest in the artist in question that I was hunting and I would be damned before any of them were coming, but I did arrange tickets for them to go and see whoever it was the next day. The strings I had to pull and the things I do for an easy life.

Nagi gave me surprisingly few CDs of the artist, apparently he's not all that productive when it comes to his own music. I glanced through the cover art, decided I didn't like it and didn't bother listening. If they liked it then it couldn't be good. I put Wagner's Tristan and Isolde on loud and continued my day as normal.

Mastermind dressed me for my "date" as he insists on calling it. He said if I dressed normally I would stand out like a sore thumb, so he leant me a black vinyl jacket that ended abruptly at my trouser waistline and was double breasted to protect my dignity obviously, and then decided against it, he's smaller in the chest than I am and it barely fit. He brought out a black tee that was covered in sparkles like spider webs, I discarded that, it was like some slug had crawled over me. I told him I was going to a concert, and he said, ja ja.

He showed me what he was going to be wearing, and then we went shopping.

I bought a pair of suede trousers the colour of ox blood that hung on my hips somewhat provocatively and a black silk shirt with a tie detail at the cuffs and neck which made it a little piratical. He changed my hair with some hair mascara and gel so it stood up in spikes, and bought me coloured contacts that made my eyes shimmer. He painted my nails a strange colour called zeitgeist that made them change colour and then used mascara on me. He sat back and thought about it, before he brought out a piece of ribbon the same colour as my trousers and tied it about my neck. I began to wonder exactly what sort of concert it was I was going to. I liked the trousers though. We also bought some biker boots and some new after shave apparently because if I was spending that amount of money on a date I needed to smell as fuckable as I looked, and according to Mastermind I looked very fuckable indeed.

He took a photo. I will kill him later for that.

I have to admit Aya was taking as much care as I was, he's been hyper about the concert, much to the chagrin of the rest of Weiss who wanted to go as much as Schwartz and are going tomorrow as well and decided not to play the music by the band he's seeing later and to play a song I recognised, for once, called Psycho killer1, on repeat. The irony was not lost on me.

He was dancing around his room as he got ready, "I can't seem to face up to the fact, I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax, I can't sleep because my bed's on fire, don't touch me I'm a real live wire. Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?" I couldn't watch, besides it means it will be a surprise when I see him later.

The band were American. That's a good place to start. They were also very loud. Very very loud. The audience was also very scary. Very very scary.

I knew I looked fuckable, hell if I had have walked into any gay bar in Japan I would have had company for the night just by breathing. Mastermind had dressed me up to seduce and seduce I should have done, except for one small detail. I was terrified and it all went very wrong. Very very wrong.

I'll begin at the beginning. I took a taxi to the venue because I was nervous and didn't trust myself to drive. I told everyone else it was concert jitters, that I was excited. Nagi asked me the name of the band, I got it wrong.

I overpaid the taxi driver and flashed the ticket man my laminated pass, this got me through the worst of the crowd to the backstage area where I had arranged for my prey and Honjyou to be as well. As I said, I pulled strings to arrange this.

It was supposed to be simple, I imagined that my ability as a precognitive would have enabled me to see danger coming and avoid it, obviously its idea of danger and mine do not coincide in this regard. First of all as I went into the area which was caged off, which my pass gave me access to, some woman groped me, she stuck her hand down my pants and damn near jerked me off there and then. Then she had the gall to tell me I was late. The concert wasn't due to start for a whole twenty six minutes and that was only the first pre-show artist. She managed all this with her hand in my crotch. I tried to remove her hand and explained I think she had me confused with someone else and if she didn't remove her hand I was going to cut it off and ram it somewhere she didn't want it. She didn't apologise, she didn't remove her hand and she called me a drama queen.

I was rescued by Honjyou of all people. He didn't know me, I only know him from surveillance. "I think you might have the wrong man," he told the woman, "as the one you're meant to be molesting is over there." He turned her head and saw that he was right. She removed her hand, wiped it off on my trousers, and then made her way across the crowd. I think I thanked him. He shrugged it off.

That was the start of things going wrong. Ever hear the cliché that all foreigners look alike, it seems this holds true of gaijin as well. Twice more I was mistaken for the artist in question, twice! All before the show began. Once by the venue operator who wanted to shake my hand and welcome me to our fair country. He at least listened when I told him to piss off that I was a fan and the man he wanted was over there. The second was a gaggle of groupies who were telling me all about what they wanted to do to the lead singer of whatever band it was we were meant to be watching. They were all very pretty girls.

I didn't think we looked alike. I was a lot taller than he was for one.

Two dark haired gaijin in close proximity look a lot alike if you're not paying as close attention as you should. I make excuses, I was humiliated by this man but it wasn't his fault, that time.

The opening act were loud, ignorant and swore far more than absolutely necessary, they pranced about, most of the groupies went into the pit to watch and scream and jiggle and whatever else it is groupies do. Honjyou and Aya were whispering something in each other's ears, both drinking imported American beer from bottles. There was no third glass.

My plan to drink the devil's drink obviously didn't apply, that didn't mean I couldn't maybe arrange a dance with him. This was a concert, people danced, didn't they? The people in the crowd seemed to be surging, like a tide, and jumping at the same time, it was quite a phenomenon to watch actually but I can't imagine I wanted to be in it. It was uncivilised.

I made a mental note never to come to a place like this again, and if I had to, be backstage. It was crowded here, maybe fifty or sixty people in tight proximity, but that was scary.

Aya was all in black, vinyl trousers and Chelsea boots with a cuban heel and his crasher's coat over a skin tight top that looked suspiciously like it was made of the fabric they make swimming costumes out of. The music was really loud, I couldn't have imagined he would have liked it, but it made sense if I thought about it, it was loud and dark and sinister, I could see why everyone else liked it. It didn't strike me as the kind of music that Honjyou would like, if anyone here listened to country it was him. Honjyou looked at me and I realised I had been staring. I grabbed the first person to pass me to initiate a conversation to get me out of the awkward "I've been caught staring glance away" moment and it was the headliner's drummer, it wasn't intentional, he just walked past me as I was caught and needed an excuse.

"Americajin?" He asked me in Japanese.

I answered him in English, that I was, he asked me where I was from, and I told him, we even discussed high schools for a few minutes. "You're very hot, perhaps we can meet up afterwards." The man said, "there's a private party at the hotel after the show, maybe you could," and he paused before he said it, "come." I was this close to ramming my fist down his throat so far that it would have come out the back of his head. This close.

I explained that I was with someone, but thank for the offer, and flicked my eyes to Aya who was laughing with some other member of the band.

I didn't know he'd take them up on the private party, did I?

I bugged Honjyou so I know nothing happened, but...

It was just a private party.

Control, I needed to regain control.

This close.

Maybe I should have brought Mastermind or Nagi then I wouldn't feel so high and dry in this place, so out of place.

Aya on the other hand was behaving exactly as if he had grown up in this kind of environment. He was laughing with the lead singer about music and tailors in English as if he had known them all his life, they even discussed girls, briefly. Then the man left to get ready to go on stage.

They opened with a song I had heard before, from Nagi's room when he thought no one was in, so I recognised it, and I had to admit it was very sexy listening to the heavy bass and almost crooning singer and the frenetic drum beat. I could get used to this type of music.

"You look out of place, Schwartz." Aya said behind my ear.

"Free ticket." I answered without turning back, only one person here would call me Schwartz and he was pressed against my back. "And you?"

"The Nine Inch Nails don't tour often, I took the opportunity, I liked them a long time ago and never got tickets." I nodded as if it made sense. There were too many people here for anything to happen. "I don't listen to them very often any more, but I still really like them."

I nodded, his breath was hot on the back of my neck. "I've never heard them before, Prodigy was meant to come, he likes them, but he was taken sick, and it's a shame to waste a ticket."

"Especially a backstage pass." He said, "do you know you look like him," he flicked his eyes to the stage and the man singing there. "I'd be careful tonight, or you might get molested."

I would not squeak. I would not swallow. "Really, I thought I was taller."

"You are, but you know all gaijin look alike, especially in those pants." He didn't touch me, he didn't have to. My control abandoned me completely and utterly. I was this close to turning around and kissing the very life out of him. "I'd be careful just in case."

"I can look after myself, Abyssinian."

"I am fully aware of that." He said. "I just don't like surprises." I couldn't tell if that was a threat. "And I imagine that neither do you."

"No," I agree, "but I don't get many. Though seeing you here tonight was one."

"Really?" He asked, he was pressed against my back by the crowd, I wanted to turn around and ravish him until he cried, but I didn't, because if I did he'd have won. I didn't know if he knew that we were playing.

"You're obviously not a threat tonight." I told him.

"Obviously not, not with this many people about." He conceded, he had a bottle in his hand, the glass was cold against my forearm, I really really wanted him. But not like this, if it was like this I would never have control again. "Schwartz."

"Crawford," I corrected him, "my name is Crawford." It annoyed me he insisted on calling me Schwartz, we had known each other for years, in one way or another we didn't have to dally on ceremony.

The song changed, he purred, I very nearly groaned. "I love this song." He said, "Crawford." Then I heard what the man was singing and I swear if the press of bodies had have allowed it I would have fled. I needed fresh air, damn it, I needed a drink. I took his, he didn't seem to mind. I drained it dry. "Don't you?" He asked. "you give me the reason, you give me control, I gave you my purity, my purity you stole2." He was singing along behind my ear, I was going to die, "It comes down to this, your kiss, your fist." I think I was blushing when I started at that. He was also dancing, a strange jerking in time to the music I was really glad I couldn't see after what happened the last time, I'm just glad that my shirt covered me to mid thigh, I could feel his hair against my neck.

"I think I could like it." I said trying my best to keep my voice even. "It has its good points." And one of them was grinding his hips into my ass like it was going out of fashion. Control, it was all about control. I had to count to ten.

"Its called Sin." He said, his shoulders rocking to the music and his head tilted, "it's just so sexy isn't it, Crawford."

I fled. I admit it, I couldn't take any more and I fled, like the coward I was. "I'm going to the bar, want anything?" I said, "I won't poison it." I added.

"I'll have what you're drinking." He said eyeing the bottle in my hand, the one he had got. I turned and we were so close from the press of bodies wanting to see on the stage that one of my legs was between his, "thanks though."

"It's only fair." I reply, part of my trying to make sense of my thoughts, trying to work out why he let me drink his beer. Is he trying to seduce me, no he can't be, he hates me, doesn't he?

When I brought back the beers he was dancing with Honjyou again, I really shouldn't have moved, too late now. He mouthed thanks and took two of the three bottles off me with a laugh, and I went back to where I had been, moving several reporters out of the way, I don't know why I bought a bottle for Honjyou, manners maybe.

The artist did a cover of a song I knew, the Passenger by Iggy Pop. The audience went psychotic. I made a mental note so that I could brag about it later to people who actually cared about the band. Then one which he called Pretty Vacant3 which he said had been requested by a fan, I assumed it was his. The smirk on Aya's face told me the name of the fan that asked for it quite clearly. He actually screamed like a fan girl with everyone else when he said it. I didn't recognise the song, which Nagi berated me for when I had to give him all the gory details of the concert. He said I was out of touch for not recognising it. He said I was far too out of touch to be attending a concert of this magnitude.

I got him a set list by asking the shorter man who looked like me for it on the way out, he said sure and handed it to me. Nagi would cream his pants for it, and I was glad to be making him jealous. I would give him it, though, eventually.

The real problem with a song every one in the audience was screaming for, one which I had heard of but never heard. They played one called "the perfect drug" which went along the lines of "you are the perfect drug" which Aya mouthed along to whilst looking at me. Despite that even after the six beers I had had up to that point I considered that a Look.

The problem song Nagi recognised immediately as being the band's most famous number and came in the encore. It was called Closer.

The American midget very nearly died, if I had have been armed with anything other than a bootknife I would have shot him for singing it, I really would have. I would have emptied an entire clip into him, and then kicked his corpse for good measure. The chorus, which was sung across the back stage audience at me by Aya who was watching me with a Look that decided I was prey was "I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside." There are two ways it could be taken, I told myself later, one that it was true and he did, the other more plausible reason that he was watching me because I was an enemy, an established long term enemy, and that he was singing along because he knew the song and it went with the mood of the moment. I liked that answer better.

I went straight home after the concert, I had to bypass Nagi and go into the bathroom and relieve myself before I could tell him about the concert and hear his whining that he wasn't going till tomorrow. I didn't tell him about Aya. I needed time to process that information. He went to the backstage party and discussed music with the American, and then books then poetry, it turned out that the American had read some of Aya's short stories when they were published in English by a Japanese magazine. I listened to the tape in bed, just to make sure. You can't trust rock bands that sing songs like that, and judging by the noises that came out of the other rooms on Honjyou's microphone. I had to put a pillow over my face to get to sleep.

* * *

1 Talking Heads song

2 Sin Nine inch nails

3 This is by the Sex Pistols, and there is a funny story about this, I was at a concert where this was played and someone asked what album it was off, thinking that she knew it was a cover I said, I don't know, the greatest hits, and she asked if the band we were watching had a greatest hits. I thought it was priceless.


	5. As never fool for love, I starved for yo...

Part 5

_As never fool for love, I starved for you;   
_

I woke up the next day sweaty after a very detailed dream in which Aya was singing to me again, not the first song as he had before about the whip, but one of those concert songs, "I'd rather die, than give you control1" as he fucked me. Of course when I woke up covered in my own mess, I realised that Nagi was playing the song in question. Which was a slight relief.

I got up and showered, trying to wash the debacle of the previous night out of my head and off my skin but all I could remember was the feel of his breath on my skin and the shape of his mouth as he told me that he wanted to fuck me like an animal. This was about control, it was still about control. It just happened that he was in control at the moment. Nagi was in a really good mood, and his music was very loud. I put on a pair of pants and went out, he was in the kitchen, making pancakes. I had a slight hangover, and I was tired from a night of what can only be called excessive wet dreams.

He had made expensive coffee, "tell me all about it." he said as he heaped thick fluffy pancakes in front of me and handed me the syrup.

"I don't know the artist well enough to tell if they were any good." I said honestly, "but the crowd were wild, scary, and I'm not sure I like the idea of you going to a place like that."

"Then backstage my tickets." He said, "and besides I'll be with Schu and Far, like anyone is going to do anything to me when I'm with them, Tousan." He said, I really have to get him out of the habit of doing that. He's still so tiny he could mistaken for someone much younger than he is, and there were some real freaks at that concert last night. I have to concede his point though. I'm sending him with a pair of freaks.

"Did they play Closer?" He asks, I ask which one was it, he tells me, I agree, they definitely played that one, and I go back to my room and get him the set list I got for him. I drank my coffee.

"Their opener wasn't very good though, loud, swore a lot, not much melody." I tell him. He shrugs and goes back to asking me questions about a concert I really wasn't paying any attention to and it took four hours after for my ears to stop ringing. "They played something called Pretty Vacant that's not on the list." I thought Nagi was going to faint, he stopped breathing and a vase at the window exploded.

"They didn't." He accused.

"They did." I told him.

"It's not on the list." He said.

"It was a fan request. The lead singer did it on his own."

"K'so." Nagi swore, Nagi never swears, Nagi swears about as often as I lose control. "I'd give a kidney to see that. I'll have to get Schu to arrange it. You're sure it was called Pretty Vacant." I nod. "You don't even know what it was." Nagi protested, "you don't even understand."

"What was it, a b side?" Nagi actually slaps his head.

"I don't know you." He says walking away, "I can't believe," I don't hear the rest of it before he walks away. I eat my breakfast in silence and then go to the gym where I work out for hours trying to burn the tension away, but every time I do I see red hair flicked across lily white skin with half lidded eyes, "It comes down to this." He sings, his voice thick with lust. I have to have him, or I am going to die, explode like the vase in the kitchen. He hadn't been giving me a look at the concert, had he? He had called me Crawford though. I never answer to Bradley, I hate the name, in my head I only answer to Oracle or Crawford, I have to pay attention when Schuldig calls me Brad or Brad-Brad or the more detested Bradley. The same as I don't think of him as Ran, though that's his name, I call him Aya, the name he chose for himself.

I make a decision as we do need a new vase now, as Nagi detonated the other one. I am going to go to the Kitty in the House and I am going to buy some flowers.

I should have checked the rota first. Its Sunday, they're closed.

I go to the apartment I have decided to rename the Fujimiya Aya Well as that doesn't sound quite as ominous as shrine, even if it is a shrine, and watch him. Rewinding through the footage revealed that he had slept in till nearly ten and skipped practise. That has never happened before, and now he's wandering around in battered cotton pyjama bottoms and a washed out sweatshirt that must be five sizes too big for him with a coffee cup. He looks really hot like that too. Tired but hot.

He has lain down on the horrid green sofa they have, with his white are feet hanging over the end, the coffee cup dangling from one wrist, empty, and the other wrist over his eyes. "Hard night?" Balinese asks from the kitchen.

"A long night." He corrects, without moving. "Great show though. My ears are still ringing."

"Did they?" Balinese asks interestedly.

"Of course." He replies not waiting to ask what it was, but judging by my conversation with Nagi this morning I can guess. "And, after show party at the hotel." He's bragging.

"You are too pretty!" Balinese accuses hitting him on the stomach with a throw pillow on the stomach, when he brings his hand up to protect himself he drops the empty coffee cup.

"I don't beat you up when you're hung over." Aya accuses with a laugh.

"I don't get to go to after show parties at the hotel, unless you count that," he catches himself, "I hate you," he says hitting him with the pillow again.

"Yoji, I'm sick." He protests laughing.

"It's self inflicted." Bombay pipes up from somewhere. "So you can suffer."

He has balled himself up into a foetal position as Balinese beats him with the cushion, this appears to be a game, they are both laughing. "Is there something I should know about?" Siberian asks going into the communal area.

"Aya has a hangover after going backstage and then to the after show party." Bombay explains from his position off camera.

Siberian's expression is calm as he takes the pillow from Youji. "You have till the count of three." He says quietly, "one," Aya takes no further hints and springs to his feet and runs out of the room laughing, Siberian dives after him.

I get the impression they've played this game before, just maybe not with Aya, this strikes me as out of character for him. He stops at the top of the stairs, looking slightly grey as Siberian comes up, "enough." He rests his head in his hands, "I do have quite a hang over."

"Serves you right." He says, "come back down, I won't beat you with the cushion, I promise, I'll even make you some breakfast."

"Temee," Aya growls. "I'll kill you one day."

"Probably," Siberian says offering him a hand up. I don't have a hangover, I actually feel quite healthy, repressed and desperate, but healthy. He looks all cute though ever so slightly grey. "How does bacon and eggs sound?" Aya takes the pillow from him and bats him with it. "Smoked eels it is then."

Part of me is envious of their easy complicity, and I wonder if I could someday have something similar. No, this is about control. I want to control him. My brain supplies me with the image of him in the kitchen obeying my every whim, that image isn't as pleasant as I thought it would be. It replaces himself with an image of me tickling him, and he has his knees up to try and fend me off and we are both laughing. I like that image, but its not an image of control, its an image of complicity. I wonder if he is ticklish.

This is about control, I tell myself, not complicity.

I flick the control to real time. He's still lounging on the sofa, he's watching TV, actually, now I look closer, he's asleep facing an on television. He looks peaceful when he sleeps. The night vision camera is invasive and so I rarely watch him sleep, besides he has his covers so far up all I can see is the tip of his nose and the top of his ears, and two fingers out of five. He looks almost boyish, there is no artifice in his face, no stress, nothing. He has curled up on his side with his hand by his face. He looks sweet sleeping. His lower lip was out in an almost pout. Judging by the way his eyes are flickering I'd say he was dreaming.

I lean forward and touch the screen tracing the line of his jaw with my fingers. Control, this is all about control, but he is in control now.

I have set up a bed in the well, so I take the opportunity to sleep. My dream changes again, sometimes I don't imagine him screwing me senseless. I dreamt that I was watching him sleep. He had kicked off the covers because he was too warm, my heat in the bed had made the cover unbearable, his back was bare, and he was sleeping sprawled out, there was a mark on his back, I couldn't make out what it was as it was obscured by the line of the sweat pants he was sleeping in. He wasn't curled up by sprawled on his side so that he was almost on his stomach. His hair was swept back from his profile and he was sucking on his pout. He was mine, and I was his. I was watching him sleep and he let me, not like I had before where I had stolen it. The right was mine and I had taken it.

When I woke up I had a strange taste in my mouth, almost as if I had had a vision, but all the visions I've had lately have been the answers to quiz show questions before they're asked, and myself surrounded by cats. I wondered over the mark on his back, probably a scar, but I am yet to see him topless, maybe I do need to put a camera in the bathroom.

I showered and put on some fresh clothes, the well is very well stocked, and went back to the safe house. "Long day, brad-brad?" Mastermind asks me. I just scowl at him. There is coffee in the pot and they're getting ready for their concert, "You've been occupied lately."

"It's nothing." I tell him.

"Are you sure, we could help you know, we're all team mates here."

"It's nothing." I shout at him before I catch myself.

"Okay," he says backing away slightly. "Just trying to be friendly, still not shifted that poem then."

"No." I snarl. "If you want anything, I'll be in my room." Even if they did want something they'd never come in and ask.

Nagi knocked to let me know they were going out. I hauled him in for an inspection, knowing what I wore to the same concert the night before and what met me there, a certain American drummer comes to mind, I wanted to make sure he'd be all right. Hell I knew I was paranoid, he was going with Mastermind and Berserker, it was everyone else I should have worried for, but Nagi is still very young.

He wore a black long sleeved tee that covered him quite nicely if it was a bit tight fitting and a pair of chocolate brown jeans and heavy lace up boots. He was dressed respectably, but I suspect he was wearing mascara. When he turned around I very nearly gagged. The entire back of the tee was covered in tour dates, fine, but the title of the tour was "eat the pregnant." It was a tee to make Berserker smile. "I know," he said quietly, "I'll go change."

"No," I said, "it's okay," I forced it out.

"Are you all right?" He asked. "You've been different lately,"

"Just prepossessed." I tell him. "But shouldn't you be wearing something with chains and buckles."

"I was going to, but I figured you'd have me in for inspection and didn't want to risk it." He says with a smile. He shows me his ear where he is wearing four separate hoops. I think a week ago I would have beaten him for it, today it doesn't surprise me.

"I upgraded your ticket." I tell him, "keep an eye on Farfarello, and."

"I know," he says sullenly, "no powers."

"I was going to say, no freaky American drummers or after show parties." I ruffle his hair.

"Hai, Tousan." He smiles, "I like you better like this. I'm beginning to think I don't want you to nail Abyssinian if you're going to be like this."

A week ago I would have beaten him, as it is I blush bright red. "how?" Is about all I can manage.

"I would." He says, "hell all of us would, you're just late to noticing it. And besides those tapes of yours are damn hot." My hand tightens on his shoulder, not out of a desire to hurt him, I just have to clutch on. "And you've been calling out his name in your sleep."

"Go." I say. "Now." He doesn't waste the opportunity.

They know, they all know.

I could die.

At the Kitty in the House they have abandoned him to attend the same concert, I begin to wonder if its been planned that way. They hadn't had they? I am a precognitive, I am meant to be able to see the future, I am meant to be able to see people plotting my downfall. I should have had a vision, a hint, something, I wasn't losing my power, I still knew who it was before I answered the phone, if anything it was getting stronger, but Nagi knew.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like it one bit.

Aya had woken up and after eating leftovers had gone on the Internet to kill time. I knew for a fact he didn't get the opportunity to do it often. He checked on the release dates for some books, I could see the screen perfectly and even zoomed in, and then with something of a guilty smile he logged on to a chat room.

I could have died.

I took a note of the location and his call sign and did exactly the same thing with a laptop I kept under my bed in case of emergencies. It was there in case of black outs or emergencies but if I used the big computer I couldn't see his expression when he was typing, and besides it's not like he would know it was me.

It took a couple of minutes to register with the damn thing, another thing I would have liked to foresee, I can foresee leeks for dinner but I can't foresee annoying registration forms. I registered myself under the call sign BLACKORACLE. I couldn't resist. When I saw it wasn't taken I just had to. He took the bait.

REDROSE: I thought you didn't like surprises.

BLACKORACLE : LOL, why I never.

Truth be told I picked up Internet slang from Nagi, and then I'm not good at it.

REDROSE: I'm switching to a private channel. No one can interfere now.

I couldn't have told the difference. This is Nagi's domain, not mine.

BLACKORACLE: On your own?

REDROSE: they went out, left me house sitting.

He was smiling.

BLACKORACLE: same here, mine went to a concert, same as we did.

REDROSE: LOL, same here. Did they make dinner first?

BLACKORACLE: LOL

BLACKORACLE: they never do.

That was a lie, Schuldig most often did make dinner, and I had told him not to bother.

REDROSE: image of everyone at concert. LOL

BLACKORACLE: only let Prodigy go as Berserker going, never heard of band till last night, now scared.

REDROSE: you got out alive didn't you, and mostly unharmed.

BLACKORACLE: molested by some woman with hands like Doctor Octopus, jiggled at by groupies, congratulated on the show, and propositioned by the drummer, mostly unharmed.

REDROSE: LOL. What did he propose.

BLACKORACLE: he invited me to the after show party, he really wanted me to

BLACKORACLE: come

BLACKORACLE: his pause not mine.

REDROSE: LOL and points

REDROSE: should have come though, it was fun. A good chance to practise English.

BLACKORACLE: I'm American, I don't need to practise English, and was it the drummer that invited you?

REDROSE: that would be telling?

BLACKORACLE: did you

BLACKORACLE: come

BLACKORACLE: sorry hit the wrong button.

REDROSE I believe you

I can see from the expression on his face that that is not what he's thinking, he's giggling and enjoying what can only be called flirting.

BLACKORACLE: It's not really your scene the whole groupie thing.

REDROSE: not really, I did only go for the music

BLACKORACLE: I thought you'd listen to traditional music, you look like you should, I didn't think you'd like the whatever they were called.

REDROSE: I like American

REDROSE: music.

BLACKORACLE: really.

I'm pretending to ignore the very blatant slip there.

REDROSE: I like my music sexy, I like artists I can lose myself in. and their instrumental pieces are haunting.

BLACKORACLE: honto ni

REDROSE: honto

BLACKORACLE: honto honto

He is laughing at this.

REDROSE: honto, raid Prodigy's CDs and check.

BLACKORACLE: I believe you.

This is more fun that I could have thought. We're almost strangers despite knowing each other for years, in one way or another, and we do seem to have things in common.

REDROSE: Its not all about fcking you like an animal

He's rubbing his hands together in glee at that one. I'm not going to let it slide.

BLACKORACLE: IMHO you are trying to tease me

REDROSE: I couldn't believe you didn't know it.

BLACKORACLE: I don't like many new artists. I like classical music.

REDROSE: so does WHITEKNIGHT, but he had a good time.

WhiteKnight, so that's Honjyou's call sign, I'll remember that for later.

BLACKORACLE: he looked more at home than I did.

REDROSE: didn't want to be there either, but had this image of me in the middle of the crowd.

REDROSE: image of trampled flower

BLACKORACLE: you're not Prodigy, you can look after yourself.

REDROSE: I imagine you could take care of me

If he gets any more blatant...

REDROSE: you've always beaten me in the past its hard to get past your defences.

I have to diffuse this...

BLACKORACLE: I'd let you go in the pit alone, it was scary in there, like something from a zombie flick

REDROSE: LOL

REDROSE: LOL

REDROSE: LOL

He is laughing as well, thinking of his next answer. I have made him laugh.

REDROSE: you didn't say whether or not you enjoyed it

BLACKORACLE: it certainly was unexpected

REDROSE: next time its my turn to buy you a drink.

I don't think he can get more blatant.

BLACKORACLE: It was on me

I can play too, I'm out of practise, but not made of stone. He is smirking at that.

REDROSE: this is more fun than I thought it'd be

REDROSE: you seem OOC

BLACKORACLE: OOC?

REDROSE: out of character,

BLACKORACLE: you don't know me very well if you think that

REDROSE: if I get to know you you'd be like this?

REDROSE: I thought you liked to be in control

BLACKORACLE: its my favourite way to play

REDROSE: we're alike in that, I like to be in control too

BLACKORACLE: a bad habit, maybe I could break you out of it

REDROSE: might be more effort than its worth.

He's still smiling, I have made him smile, I have made him laugh.

REDROSE: am going to sign off now as nature calls and there's a film I want to watch on tonight.

REDROSE: was fun, see you soon

REDROSE has left the chatroom

BLACKORACLE: I hope.

* * *

1 Head like a hole. I thought it applied here. 


	6. My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see

Part 6

_My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see._

If I couldn't see into his apartment I don't think I would have gotten off the laptop all night, or this morning either just to see if he'd come back online. He didn't. He did what he said, he went to the bathroom, came out dressed for bed, he always changes in the bathroom, laughing to himself, and then took his blanket downstairs and watched a film that was on the TV. Then got comfy waiting for everyone else to come in.

They did, Bombay nuzzled in under his blanket and told him all about the show. He said he'd just watched TV all night. Not a single mention of me. I still don't know whether to be flattered or annoyed. He carried Bombay to bed when he fell asleep, where he, I imagine, tucked him in, there are no cameras in those rooms, and then dumped his blanket on the bed, and went back down to talk to the other two. They talked about a lot of things, including Aya's lack of a long term partner excluding Honjyou, who according to Balinese, doesn't count, in fact Siberian got some good needling in about him not having any partner. He just smirked at them.

Part of me expected him to say that there was someone just to shut them up, that he was being hunted and was enjoying it for the moment, or that he was hunting and they had nothing to fear. What he did say was "set me up with Sakura again and Youji I'll rearrange your date planner again, and Siberian I'll put water in your football, again." I can see the problems those would entail but now I was curious as to who Sakura was.

Even if he wasn't interested they seemed to think he might be.

Did I possibly have a rival?

Nagi checked in on me when he came home, bawled me out, yes me, for not eating and made me some sandwiches. He even made tea and I listened very politely as he told me all about his concert, and then asked me what I had done. I told him I went on the Internet for a short time and then watched a film on TV, which was mostly true, I had watched Aya watch a film on TV. Nagi might have raised an eyebrow but he didn't press the issue. He told me that he had had a run in with a certain drummer, that Mastermind called him a shotakon and that Berserker had felt up all the man's chains and said that pretty chains hurt god and the man had left them alone after that.

It made me almost wish I had brought him along the night before, but if I had then I wouldn't have had the pleasure of having Aya dance with me. A single member of Schwartz obviously isn't as much of a threat as all four of us, and besides it had made it, despite all the people backstage, intimate.

Nagi once told me the absolute best way to keep Mastermind out of your head, and you can, if you know what to look for, tell when he's trying to get entry. Estet taught us to divert our thoughts, to create a smoke screen as it were, Nagi discovered that doggerels distract him and drive him nuts. Humming infuriates him. Whenever I get that tingle I start humming Frere Jacques, which is catchy, and drives him out quicker than a sharp slap around the back of his head. Nagi likes the jingles from adverts. I often find myself humming though to keep my head free, whether or not Mastermind is eavesdropping. It helps to calm me when my eye starts twitching. My eye has started twitching. Whenever I think of Aya in his crashers coat singing to me, my eye starts twitching. I really like the crashers coat.

The twitching isn't good. I really should see someone about that.

I decided to read a book today, one I have been meaning to read for sometime about business strategies, I have nothing planned so I am going to read this book that applies the ancient war strategies of the Swiss to business.

It doesn't mean I didn't turn the TV on to keep an eye on the Kitty in the House now does it. So while I was learning all about the undefeated tactics of the Swiss pikemen I also learnt that Aya was going to the cinema today because they were having a one off showing of a film he wanted to see, and had only got the flier this morning. He does change his plans, but only rarely.

It meant that I was going to change my plans. According to the cinema in question the film started at ten past seven, so I booked a ticket there and then over the phone and did my best to decide what to wear and prayed he didn't back out.

He didn't.

He wore jeans and a sweater with a hood because it was getting cold, and didn't mind my presumption at sitting next to him in the cinema, we were about halfway down, and I must admit I enjoyed the movie, even if he did steal half of my popcorn. He smelt of hand cream and strawberries and there was a hint of roses in his hair. He asked if I was following him. I laughed and asked if he wanted me to be.

He didn't answer that.

He invited me out for coffee afterwards, saying that he owed me a drink for the beer at the concert, and I agreed. If he had have asked me if I wanted to be tied up in my own intestines, I would have agreed. I couldn't tell you what film we went to see. I couldn't tell you the language it was in, I pointed myself at it, and paid attention with every other sense I had.

He told the waitress he took his coffee as black as the devil and as hot as hell. I didn't groan, I really really wanted to, but I didn't. I told her I was the same. He raised a scarlet eyebrow at that. I had only meant that I wanted my coffee like that, honest.

He worded it not me.

It's hard to think when he's in such close proximity. He smells wonderful. He's not wearing after-shave but he works with flowers all day. He smells of earth and flowers and strawberries. Two of those smells I can explain. It's an American style diner we've gone to and we're sat across a table in a booth by the window. It's clean and bright and reminds me of the years in America training with Rosenkreuz. The waitress brings over two black coffees and puts them down. I wonder if they're bottomless.

"So," he starts, sipping his coffee, "what did you think of the movie?"

"Derivative." I answer, its a great word for getting you out of trouble.

"Its the one they derive from." He replies, "Yojimbo1 is a very important film." I notice the word, bodyguard, it is a film I have heard of, and I wonder if my distracted attention counts as having seen it.

"I don't watch many films." I tell him, That's the truth.

"Me neither, truth be told, but there are films I love, and Yojimbo's one of them." I can verify the truth of that. "I'm a reader more than a watcher."

"I like to read," I tell him, but he reads fiction and I don't.

"Really?" He sounds interested now, "what are you reading?"

I tell him, he moves his chin slightly, "I've heard of that, but I wouldn't trust their acumen, they were undefeated because they chose their battles carefully and they were, in the end undone by a pretty soldier." That catches me unawares, "I used to read a lot of history, I'll read anything really, but I still research for," he pauses I'm not supposed to know about his side project.

"The stories?" I ask. He nods, surprised I know about them. "I wasn't too hard to put it together when I found one in one of Nagi's magazines, you're very good."

He blushes a little, "thank you." He says, "only Yuushi knows, don't tell me my pseudonym is too obvious."

"Only if you can see the future." I assure him.

"Thank god," he is obviously relieved, "I'd never get any peace if everyone knew."

"They're really good why hide them?" I have leant across the table, I'm in control of this conversation and he knows it.

"Writing historical romance," he snorts, "my reputation as the ice cold killer of Weiss would be history." He drinks more of his coffee. "Its hard to take someone seriously when its all about the pirate and his lady love."

"You run yourself down." I tell him, "Some of those books can be really good, and you've been published all over the world." That's true, I know that.

"You've done your research." Is that admiration?

"You are Weiss," I tell him quietly as if that is an explanation. "That and it's cute watching Nagi swoon and clutch the magazine to his chest whilst he has a quiet sob." He smiles at that, "he might just be your biggest fan. He probably has as many of those stories as you do."

"I don't read them," he says, "I like my fiction darker, more sinister."

"More like you?" I ask.

"I suppose." He has emptied his coffee cup. "It's strange, I didn't think I'd like talking to you, but we have more in common than I thought."

"You mean other than the whole assassin thing?" I ask raising an eyebrow.

"I was thinking leader of assassin thing." He replies, "and the control issues we both have." That I can't argue with, this whole thing is about control. "I didn't realise that we both liked Kurosawa, or that you had read my work, it's always nice to meet a fan."

"Nagi's the fan, not me. I read them because they were there in the bathroom, and there's not a man in the world that doesn't get dewy eyed over the idea of the fair maiden being lifted by the dashing pirate and dragged away to the Caribbean to be saved by the also interesting but in a different way naval officer."

He rolls his eyes. "I was thinking of branching out." He said. "Possibly into shonen-ai." That was blatant. We've been innocent until now, "or even yaoi."

I didn't choke on my coffee, I considered it though. "really?" It didn't come out at all squeaky.

"There's a huge market for it in America, it was suggested to me, Of course when I mentioned it to Yuushi he sprayed me in coffee." I am so glad that I didn't, of course, I'm sure my reasons were different. "Most Yaoi is written by women and so with a man's point of view..." He leaves it open. "I can't seem to make it work though."

"You and Yuushi must be close," I say doing my best to change the subject, "you mention him a lot."

"He's my best friend, I suppose." He admits a little ruefully, "we have a history and I can tell him anything, strangely like I can tell you." I can see that that has caught him unaware. "Even about pirates and naval captains."

"I imagine the teasing would be merciless." I say, Schwartz would never dare tease me, although I have been letting Nagi call me Tousan which is slight mockery, the irony is I'm the only real father that Nagi has ever known.

"I would never hear the end of it." He agrees, "It would be ship ahoy, and lo what light through yonder window breaks. I just had to tease Omi when I caught him reading one, and I'll never live down writing them." He's calm and content, laughing to himself. I can't express how happy it makes me to make him laugh. "They're quick and easy and make a lot of money, and I needed money for my sister."

"How is your sister?" I ask. He tenses slightly. "I have no further interest in her." I tell him, "I would like to know she is well though." That seems to calm him somewhat. I know perfectly well about his sister, for more reasons than just part of my observation of him. Although we have no further interest in her, we may some day in the future.

"She is well." He answers finally, "she is studying to be a nurse in Europe." His voice is clipped and sure. He's not as open as he was before.

"That's good to hear." I tell him. I have gone too far, it seems that icy Abyssinian is never to far from the surface. I am struggling to think how I can change the subject.

"It's nice of you to ask." He says obviously aware of how the tone of the conversation has changed into more familiar territory for the two of us.

"And has Yuushi recovered from all the beer he drank at the concert?"

That seems to lighten the tone somewhat. "He said you drugged him." He says brightly, "that was the only reason he felt so rough yesterday. He only called after four when his head had settled.

"Did you have a hangover?" I ask pushing just a little, knowing full well that he did.

"After all I drank I'd be upset if I hadn't." He tells me, "it's like getting your money's worth, especially at the hotel, I swear they were plying me with liquor and I just don't know why?"

"You're very kirei," I say teasing him a little.

He acts mock affronted. "Kirie is a girl word." He says, "kirei, temee." He's not as offended as he is making out, I can tell that. "Not handsome."

"No," I assure him, "definitely kirei, you're too fine boned to be handsome, and with that colouring you're striking, I'll call that waitress over if you want a second opinion." He is pretty though.

"I'll call you kirei and see how you like it." He is almost growling, "you'll be calling me a bishoujo next."

"Oh no," I say, "definitely beseinen." I can flatter, with the best of them, and he is gorgeous, I wonder how I missed it for so long. There is a look of mischief in his eyes.

"For that you can buy me a drink." He threatens throwing money on the counter for the bill. "And no drugging me this time, Schwartz," he offers me his hand to help me out of the booth. I took it and was surprised that although he looks like he is made of marble his skin is actually quite warm.

The bar was around the corner, it was just a local bar with mirrored walls. He doesn't believe my protestations that I didn't drug him, I wonder over that but I accept that he doesn't believe it. Its different to the one he usually attends with Honjyou as it's full of Sararimen drinking the night away. A few hostesses linger around but take one look at the pair of us, me in a white suit and him in a sports jersey and just leave us alone. This is the kind of bar I would normally attend, not him.

One of the hostesses serves us as a waitress when I put down a solid black credit card on the table to open a tab. He raised his eye at that, I asked if his was white with a laugh. He told me no, it was platinum and it was for the shop really. I asked what name was on the card. He told me that would be telling. Mine did say Mr Bradley Crawford and was from an American bank it was far too easy to defraud.

The girl took it away and swiped it to make sure the credit was good and then brought it back. I hardly ever use it, it's so much easier to pay for everything in cash, its also a lot harder to trace. I have no doubts Nagi keeps a record of what I spend and what I spend it on so when I upbraid him for buying too many CDs or games. This will give him enough ammunition for three whole games.

I tell him to order anything he wants. He orders a double jack on the rocks with diet pepsi, I order the same. The hostess goes away leaving us to talk. This is an upmarket hostess bar, and the hostesses know enough to know when they'll get paid for just going away.

The light makes his skin luminescent and the mirrors make it look I am drinking with six of him. His eyes are the colour of lavenders, the kind of eyes that would make a woman an international beauty, especially with that cherry coloured hair part of me wants to be natural. Even in a black sports jersey and jeans he is startlingly beautiful, I called him pretty before and he took offence, I wonder if he'd mind being called beautiful.

"You look more in place here than I do." He says with a laugh looking at the bar covered as it is in sararimen.

"Maybe, but it's not my kind of place really." I tell him, "I don't go out drinking like this often, it depends on the company."

"You owe me a drink for calling me pretty."

"Then I don't want to know what it'll cost me to call you beautiful."

He shakes his head, "I get enough of that at home, Aya we need you to go in drag because you're beautiful, even with the Shi ne glare. Aya, this man has a taste for natural red heads in kimonos, and you're beautiful enough to distract him, Aya all those girls surround the Koneko because you're beautiful." He mocks it out and I daren't laugh. Laughing will I think cost an arm and a leg literally, "and when I whinge to Yuushi he just laughs and says, but you are, and now I'm getting it from you." He's mock pouting.

"You're so different compared to Abyssinian." I tell him, "he's all ice and you're not."

"Its the medication." He tells me. "Kritiker has me taking anti-Abyssinian drugs." He tells me, "twenty milligrams a day." I laugh at what is obviously a joke. "I thought they might put the rest of them on them but no just me."

"I wish we could get some similar for a certain someone." He gets the joke.

"Tut tut," he teases as the girl comes over with a tray and puts them down on the table before walking away doing her very best to swing her hips and make us notice, "you shouldn't laugh at someone on medication. Especially something as powerful as anti Abyssinians." I have to laugh at that. He is actually very funny when he sets his mind to it. He's being more open with me than I thought he would be.

"You make it easy to tease you." I tell him.

"Only if I allow it." He says drinking, he is smirking at me over the rim of his glass. "We can be this open because we're capable of killing each other. I used to dream of killing you."

"I never gave you that much thought." I tell him honestly, "you were always an annoyance."

"Am I annoying you tonight?" He asks.

"No," I tell him honestly, "you haven't annoyed me in some time, not since, I think, you eliminated Takatori." He raises an eyebrow at that, "we made no secret of the fact we used Weiss as much as Kritiker."

"You are very honest with me." He tells me as he calls over the hostess for more drinks. "I don't think I expected that."

"It's not in my nature to lie." I tell him, its not, but that doesn't mean I don't lie when it suits my purpose.

"Am I a threat to you?" He is taking advantage of my admission of honesty.

"Do you want to be?" I ask leaning forward and looking at him over the rim of my glasses.

"You look better with glasses." He tells me, "I barely recognised you in contacts." I empty my glass in a single swallow. "Do I make you uncomfortable?" He asks with a very wicked smile. I have to concentrate to stop myself from blushing. He is in complete control, he has managed our meeting with skill and delicacy and I hate to admit it but I am in his hands. "I think I like having such a notorious enemy at my mercy." I won't give in, I won't admit defeat, its not in my nature. The hostess has brought over more drinks, this time tequila, the glass rimmed in salt. "Drink up, Schwartz, I have a morning shift tomorrow, so I can't linger." He downs the tequila in one. "but here." He takes a small pencil from his pocket, "call me, this has been fun."

* * *

1 Kurosawa's Yojimbo, it's a wow of a movie. 


	7. your lying mouth most heaven in view

Part seven

_Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view_

When I came back to the safe house Farfarello was sticking painted pieces of macaroni unto paper, all the macaroni was in shades of red and he was painting massacres. Most disturbing of all the one eyed Irish maniac was singing, "_I'm a tot, je suis une tot, tilly tom and tiny_.1" I shuddered and shifted around hoping he wasn't going to see me.

"BBC World service." Mastermind said from behind me, "he was feeling homesick, try not to listen, it's really, really catchy."

Nagi was sat on the other side of the room humming it with his Game Boy advance SP (tribal edition) happily bleeping and whirring, his face was lit up. "That better be educational." I muttered.

"Hai, tousan," he answered with a smirk, "there's a lot one can learn from Pokemon Red." He looked over at me, "you were out for a long time, hot date?"

"I went to a movie." I answered, "I went to see Yojimbo."

"Yo Himbo?" Schuldig asked.

"No, Yojimbo," Nagi said rolling his eyes, "it's a masterpiece of Japanese cinema, directed by Kurosawa."

"Oh," Schuldig looked a little disappointed, "it sounded like gay porn."

"That's on Channel 5 at 2.30 this morning." Nagi said without even looking up.

"What Yojimbo?" I asked, not really sure of what I was walking into.

"No, Yo himbo." Nagi replied dryly, "Crawford, surely you know Channel 5 is Schuldig's gay porn channel."

I groaned. "Nagi, it's past your bedtime." He looked at the clock, it was barely midnight. Nonetheless without raising his eyes from his gameboy he went to his room. Of course it was too much to ask that he might actually go to bed. Well he might but just sit in it in his pj's and carry on bleeping and whirring. Turning the light out doesn't work anymore either, damn thing has a back lit screen.

I stand in the shower for a long time, dealing with all manner of personal hygiene problems, what you didn't expect me to tell you did you? I did worry over how long is normal for calling, I very nearly called him the instant I got back, pretending that I accidentally dialled it when programming it into my phone. Then I realised that that was the absolute worst excuse I could think of and resolved to phone him in the morning. Or maybe wait a couple of days, I really had no idea how to do this, in the past if I wanted someone I went out and got them, I didn't bother with this dating nonsense so why on earth would I know how long to wait before I called him.

After dressing in a pair of comfortable sweat pants and a outsized t-shirt I flick on the remote to my favourite channel, the Koneko. He's only just got back. Balinese actually smells him as he pours water into the kettle for tea. "You smell like man," he says.

"Well, Yohji, that might be because I am a man." He answers wryly.

"No," Balinese takes another deep sniff, "you smell like aftershave and coffee and," he wrinkles his nose, "liquor, you were on a date."

"I went to the pictures." Aya answers blithely, "I met a friend there, we went for a drink."

"You don't have friends," Balinese replies, "so did you get his number?"

"I gave him mine, I got the impression that he wouldn't want me phoning him." I had a brief vision of him phoning and Farfarello answering the phone. I was suddenly so glad that I hadn't given him my number.

"Is he married?" Balinese asked.

"No." That was nicely emphatic.

"Then why doesn't he want you phoning him?"

"He has nosy house-mates." Aya answered. "In fact he might as well live with a house full of you's."

"Aya, in all the time I have known you how many times have I said not to give out your number, get theirs because they won't phone you." He has a lecturing face on and I really want to shoot him, the only reason I haven't called already is because it's been less than an hour and it really is too soon, even I can tell that shifts the balance from eager to really really desperate.

"He'll call." Aya answers, "Now I have an early shift in the morning so I'm going to threaten and leave you." He blows a kiss at him in a manner that is actually sarcastic as the phone rings.

It takes me a moment to realise it's not me.

"Aya, phone." Bombay shouts from the hall, being as he is stood right beside it he picks up the kitchen handset.

He sticks his tongue out at Balinese as he answers. "Fujimiya desu." His entire face falls, "Oh, hi, Sakura." It's actually remarkable to watch, his entire expression changes from pleasantly amused to beleaguered and he sat heavily in the chair and put his head on his hand and looked down at the grain of the table. I think even if I hadn't desired him, as much as I did, seeing the look of absolute despair on his face as he spoke about whatever the girl wanted, I would have rescued him.

I took out the piece of paper with his number on it and then flipped open my cell and dialled the number.

"Sakura, I've got to go," he didn't in any way look overjoyed, "there's someone on the other line. I'll call you back, okay." The look on his face gave the impression that it would be a green day in Hell before he did, but it seemed to work because it got her off the line. "Fujimiya desu." He answered.

"I had the suspicion that you'd be entirely grateful if I phoned you now." I told him.

"So there is an advantage to precognition?" He answered with a laugh, he didn't have to ask who it was.

"More than one." I assured him dryly. I sat back in the leather armchair in my room, I could see his expression as he stood in the kitchen, he was making himself tea with his phone wedged between his ear. "Isn't there anything you want to ask me about my vision or thank me for saving you?"

"Yes," his smile was impish, he was leaning his hips against the counter as he waited for the kettle to boil, one hand holding the phone and the other playing with an eartail, twisting it around one finger in a rather teasing manner, the long gold pendant earring banging against his hand as he did it. If I had have had a romantic bone in my body I think I would have been in love, rather than pure lust that it was. "I must thank you from saving me from the terrible dilemma I was in, talking to a young girl who worships me."

"If you want," I said, watching him intently on the screen, "I could let you go and you could call back your dutiful worshipper."

"Don't you dare." He said fiercely. "She's only got two topics of conversation, me and running, and there's nothing I loathe talking about more." He poured the hot water into the tea and then went back to playing with his hair, "god it's worse than starting Omi about programming."

I laughed, because it was genuinely quite funny, "I can think of someone like that." I told him, "except the only programming he really cares about is chaos generators and that thing where you can shoot doors in games and they open."

"I like solitaire." He told me a little archly, "but anything more than that and I get confused."

"Mah-jongg," I told him, "half the time I appear to be working I'm really playing mah-jongg." I watched him laugh.

"Computers are for Omi," he told me, "I can just about use the internet and when I try to get him to explain it to me he baffles me with jargon."

"You think that's bad," I tell him, "Nagi has it wired up so that it can run these computer games I've never heard of and half the time we can't even get the internet."

"You amuse me." He told me softly. "You have a vision of me suffering under the predations of the deadly Sakura and rescue me, then you tell me the terrible secrets of your organisation, you'll be telling me the passwords next."

"I know I could and Nagi would have removed all the protected passwords to play Final Fantasy 11."

"If I even knew how to find those programs."

"You'll find yourself wandering around Final Fantasy land dressed as an orc or something." I felt quite proud of myself for that sentence.

"I'd probably lose all his experience points and he'd know he'd been hacked." Aya said, sipping his tea, and turning the bowl in his hand, it was decorated with a spray of magnolia branches, the white blossoms looking as if they were dipped in blood. I thought it lovely and suited him rather well. I suddenly had the idea of a wonderful gift for him. I half expected that he would drink tea from some ugly mug, Nagi once gave me a cup with a man running wildly and waving his arms at a load of black dots, it said midges keep me fit.

I bought him a set of moomin crockery in revenge because it pays to know what scares him the most. Believe it or not moomins are the only thing that the boy is actually scared of. And the kinder hippo, who is a giant blue moomin.

Nevertheless I actually have become fond of the mug and drink my morning coffee out of it rather than the plain white mugs that make up the rest of the tea service.

"Face it, he'd know he'd been hacked if you just set your cup down somewhere near the keyboard." I told him.

"Now tell me, did you phone me just to rescue me? Or to talk about Nagi?"

"Now, are you telling me that you're getting jealous because I'm talking about Nagi?"

"You phoned me," Aya said, "isn't this where you're supposed to regale me with stories of my beauty? And find what makes me tick so you know exactly what to say."

I laughed, it was actually quite true, "I can see the future," I told him, "I always know what to say, and I thought you didn't like being told you were kirei, that kirei was a girl word."

He laughed into his tea, "you were listening."

"What are you working the day after tomorrow?" I asked suddenly.

"It's my day off," I actually knew that but didn't say.

"I have a plan." I was smirking, I'm sure he could hear it down the phone. "I was thinking that I could take you out for tea."

He laughed, "well, how old do you think I am, taking me out for tea, and a slice of cake, as well I suppose. I must wonder if you've been sniffing the tippex you use for mission reports."

"That's water based." I protest, "Schuldig's socks have been known to have the same hallucinogenic effects however. They have pokemon on them, you know."

"His socks?" That was incredulous. "From now on I'll have to call him Pikaschu."

"That for some reason is so much funnier when you say it rather than when Farfarello did." I told him.

"I didn't think he had a sense of humour." Aya answered.

"He doesn't, he just watches Pokemon." I tell him, "now tell me you'll meet me tomorrow at the Kuroneko Ochaya, and I'll tell you what they call you."

"Hmm, now what could they call me? Ice prince, umm, the red rose of Weiss, lets see, Yohji said I was a damned kitsune." He said.

"I'm not telling you until tomorrow, he who poses."

"Why am I getting the impression that they call me Tuxedo-Kamen?" There is no way he could have guessed that, I'm thinking he overheard someone, "one of the fan girls in the shop said it the other day and it was all I could do not to spit take."

"Well," I tell him, "you both have an equally fine."

"I beg your pardon," he says mock offended.

"I was going to say code flower." I can mock innocence with the best of them.

"Face it, you were going to say ass."

"I might have been thinking ass, and visualising ass but I was going to say flower."

"So now you're fantasising about my ass." I think he's trying not to laugh.

"As if you can reassure you're not fantasising about mine." I say, I can see Balinese coming into the room. "So tell me, how do you picture my ass?" I only said it to see how he would answer with Balinese in the room.

"In the air with your face buried in the pillows." He tells me winking at Balinese who actually looks very offended.

"That better not be Sakura you're talking to." He says. "I think I'm traumatised."

Aya swats him, "ugh, that's just, ugh,"

"Nasty mental image?" I ask. I'm not supposed to be able to know what Balinese asked him.

"It'll be his punishment for thinking up such a vile topic." Aya assures me, "he's going to be thinking it all night, and then when he finally gets to sleep he'll have nightmares about Sakura." I laugh though I wouldn't know this Sakura if I was to pass her in the street. Regardless I recognise her as a rival. "I've finished my tea now, so I'm going to hang up, I'll meet you at the Kuroneko at 10, and not a moment later. Bai bai."

His sign off his rather informal and I quite like it, and it's only when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror that I realise that I'm grinning like a fool. It's lust I tell myself, and part of me even listens.

Author's note

I do finally give in to pressure, obviously,

This chapter has been written and eaten by my laptop no less than six times. It's cursed, I tell you, cursed. Its weird because the characterisation for this is very different from AA&W so… but short it might be but it is the next chapter.

There is actually a list of things that I have to mention for this, one of them, my personal favourite in fact is the moomins. I'm terrified of moomins and then one day I'm stood in House of Fraser and a tea set stared at me, and jumped a good clear foot in the air with a aarrgghh moomin and my beta said Lust list - a moomin tea set! And I had to do it.

1 This is a children's tv show from the UK, it has the most annoyingly catchy theme song, and tells surreal French fairy tales.


	8. and your remembered smell most agony

Lust 8

And your remembered smell most agony.

The Kuroneko teahouse was one that we, as Schwarz, nominally owned, and used as a temporary base of operations when we were dealing with the underworld. Unlike most of the teahouses in the area it is not a brothel. In fact it is rather well to do, where middle-aged ladies meet to practise the tea ceremony.

I arrive at around half nine and fuss for the next thirty minutes, making sure that everything is perfect, that there is not a single petal of the flower arrangement out of place. I debated, for ten minutes, over whether or not to have a geisha pour tea for us. I finally decide against it as the Mama of the place lays out two tea bowls and small sugared rice cakes. I am as nervous as a teenager on a first date.

Aya arrives slightly early, in a taxi; I am being completely unsurreptitious hanging over the balcony watching him. Someone has explained to him the level of this place and he has dressed in kimono and hakama. He is wearing his kendo gear. I find I like it.

The teahouse mama leads him in, kneeling at the door just behind her, and then to the table where I have so impatiently waited. He thanks her profusely before sitting facing me. He looks so strange and so beautiful that I want to push away the tiny table between us and make him mine. Unfortunately I know just how easy it is to use hakama and kimono to hide weapons and as I have no intention of being gutted I don't dare.

"I hope I'm not late." You say in that mellifluous deep voice that seems at odds with your appearance. I half expect you, willowy thing that you are, to have a whispery voice, something breathy and sweet. "I got caught in traffic."

"No," I answer with my heart in my throat, "not at all." I'm quite amazed that it makes sense. I had thought that being this close to him, after dreading this meeting since I arranged it the day before yesterday that I might forget how to speak a civilized language and started speaking Flemish.

It is Mastermind's favourite threat for when we ignore him, he threatens that he'll go mad and start speaking Flemish and we won't understand what he's saying.

Nagi tells him it will be an improvement.

I have been a nervous wreck about this date, I find myself daring the word date because I am pretty sure that is what it is. I showered no less than four times this morning, and spent over an hour on my hair, and baring in mind that I was here for half nine you can guess how early I was up this morning. And up being the operative word in this case.

I was jerking off with the regularity of a teenager these past few days, and with the stamina. Even Nagi has better control than me and he has taken to sniggering at certain non amusing juxtapositions. Things like cockpit, extend, and mobile home. He referred to mastermind as a monkey-humper yesterday as Mastermind complained that the last girl he had gone out with had more body hair than a gorilla. It has stuck.

I couldn't spend too much time with them, as Nagi has discovered euphemisms and there are only so many times that a teenager can make a sort of snorting chuckling noise before the mad German bops him over the head with the pillow, causing the said teenage telekinetic hits him back with the sofa. I had no intention of being caught in the middle so I spent the day at the Well.

Perhaps this had not been the best idea because it meant I spent all day surrounded by my custom made "Aya Fujimiya wallpaper." I can think of a lot of people I could market that to, but I honestly don't think I could share.

He's sitting opposite me now, cradling the tea bowl between perfect white porcelain hands. The tea is a pale gold colour that steams briefly as he holds it to his lips. I have what I would like to be a momentary vision of taking that bowl away from his lips and replacing it with my own. But as I said, I do not know how armed he is, so I don't dare.

"Try the cakes," I find myself saying instead, "they were made fresh this morning."

"Why tea? Crawford, when I said you owed me a drink why take me out for tea." He asks. It is obviously something he's been considering.

"I couldn't think of a bar in Tokyo that we wouldn't run into either Balinese or Mastermind." It is a crisp answer, but really I just wanted to frame him with the epitome of Japanese beauty. Here he looks like a samurai resting between battles. I wonder how much it would cost to have his portrait painted in full samurai armour possibly with a horse behind him. I like the idea. I like the idea a lot, now I just have to convince him into liking it as much as I do. "Besides, we are both civilised men of the world, sometimes it behoves us to avail ourselves of such sophistication."

"Behoves?" he asks, "have you been practising the answer to that question, "I can't think of anyone who uses the word behoves in everyday conversation."

"Try a long monologue from Berserker." I answer drily, "he uses it but in reference to people shoeing the devil."

"But," he says looking confused.

"I know, but tell him." I sip the tea, it is tart and bitter, and I think might be flavoured with mint. It is not entirely pleasant but I daren't say anything. I have already annoyed the teahouse Mama enough that I am actually a little afraid of her now, she may be half my size and look as if a stiff breeze would do for her, at most fifty pounds soaking wet, but I really don't want to cross her.

"The Okasan of this place seems a little," he begins but leaves it open.

"Just a touch." I agree.

"My maternal grandmother was like that," he confides leaning across the table so that I can see an expanse of pale throat that I want to sink my teeth into, "my father said she could punch holes through steel with her tongue, but you could rely on Nanny to get the job done, whether it was bullying me into doing my homework or facing down the Home Guard over table manners." He smiles, a fond and distant smile, with his beautiful amethyst eyes looking down and to the left as he remembers. "She had the meanest hand with her fan, I swear she could knock you out cold without breaking the spines." I laugh, because it is genuinely quite a funny reminiscence.

"My own granny was the opposite, a big burly woman who baked pies and had hands like slabs of meat." It seems only fair to share that information with him, "I was terrified of her, she would grab me by the ear whenever I did anything wrong and then pinch my cheeks, and her thumbs were that big," I make a gesture with my hand, "I had rosy cheeks till I was fifteen from Nana Crawford's thumbs."

He throws his head back and laughs before leaning forward, his elbows on the table and his mouth mere inches from mine, "I can imagine you as a snot nosed child running amok amongst your grandmother's vegetable patch."

"I'll have you know I was perfectly behaved." I say being mock offended.

"At your grandmother's." He finishes for me. "Nanny and mother were so different, Nanny wouldn't be afraid to get her hands dirty and I can remember helping her chase her cat around the garden, but mother wouldn't have done that. It was Nanny that helped me build a fort in the back garden, my mother was always 'Ran, be careful, those clothes were clean on.' And Nanny would shout at her that boys get dirty, that was when Aya was a baby of course." He stops then, "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Because you can." I offer rather tentatively.

"Yeah, I suppose that's true." He concedes, "all the others had really unique childhoods and I grew up in the suburbs with my sister." I think before his sister woke up getting that kind of information from him would have required power tools and an extraction team. "And for some reason I feel comfortable with you, maybe it's because you've been stalking me all these weeks."

I spray green mint tea at that. There is no way he could have known, I have been remarkably discrete.

"I mean it seems that every time I turn around you're there." He smiles at me, his lips are thin but look firm and determined. I get the distinct impression that he is teasing me. "Even when I least expect you, and then out of the blue you invite me out for tea, I mean what's a boy to think?" I can't think of answer. "Besides you're my nicest stalker, there's Sakura, and despite the fact that she's in America she still phones me three times a week to make sure I'm eating. She's absolutely terrible for it, you pay for me to eat."

"I haven't taken you out for dinner yet." I stammer.

"But it's on your agenda, isn't it?" I have to admit that it was. "Good." He says, "I really like Italian." It could have been worse.

"I thought you liked American." I tease, quite amazed at my audacity that I can say that.

"I do," he assures me, "but I am really in the mood for Italian, it's all Yohji's fault, he was telling me about this date he went on last night and the pasta that they had and now I have a taste for it. So, shall we go out for lunch and have pasta and garlic bread and rich red wine." He's deliberately teasing me, I know it, Italian's expensive.

"Fine." I answer, "as long as you don't mind getting pasta sauce on your kimono."

His smile that time is wicked, "oh you'll find that I don't suck that messily." I walked into that, utterly and completely and it's all I can do not to blush and rearrange myself so that I can sit comfortably as erect as I have become at that comment. "And I really do enjoy meatballs." I want to whimper. "I roll them around in my mouth to suck off all the sauce and then bite into them, quick and hard." It's a wonder he's not laughing out loud, of course it's entirely possible that I have spent too much time the last couple of days with Nagi and now I'm seeing absolutely everything as a euphemism. I can imagine Nagi stood there pointing and saying, "he said balls."

"I'm a bigger fan of the seafood myself," I manage, amazed at how calm my voice sounds, "especially the calamari, I love how soft and slick it feels on the tongue." I can play too, you can't live with Mastermind and pick up a trick or two about euphemisms, "and they always serve it in a salty creamy sauce that the linguini makes dribble down the chin."

"A pity it's too early for lunch," Aya tells me then pops one of the sugared fancies into his mouth, "but these are divine," he tells me after he swallows it. "I'll have to get the recipe for Omi, he likes to bake but stops at flapjack, though he makes the best flapjack, it's crumbly and sticky and sweet and chewy all at once."

I wonder just how badly I'll be maimed if I kiss him. Why is it in times like this I can't get my precognition to work?

"So are you taking me for lunch?" He asks archly.

"Do you want me to? I mean aren't you worried about being seen with me?"

"Of course not," he answers, "as long as you're paying."


	9. Love wakens love! I felt your hot wrist

Lust 9

He treats me to what can only be called a date. It is the kind of date people have in movies, where they spend the entire day together doing silly date things. After an early lunch, of penne arrabiata for those of you that absolutely have to know, he took me to a theme park in Akiba. He has changed out of the kimono and hakama and into a light tee and a pair of tight, very tight, too tight, jeans that make my eyes water. He is even wearing trainers, something I wasn't even sure he owned.

It really is the kind of date people have in boy-love manga and the irony is not lost on me either. "I want to go on the roller coaster," he says pulling me by the hand towards a wooden monstrosity of loops and whirls, the sort of thing that on the rare occasion we have treated Nagi to this kind of affair it's Farfarello that has to accompany him on the roller coasters. I have always had too much dignity, but there is something about the way he smiles, the way his hair is falling out from under his baseball cap over his eyes, and the heat of his hand in mine and before I know it I'm wandering along to join the queue.

It's the sort in which you are strapped in in pairs by a metal bar over the knees and then flung about so thighs are pressed against thighs. I must admit that I enjoyed the way he clung to my arms and slammed against me and screamed.

Afterwards we lurched off towards a small booth where we had our fortunes read and he laughed when The Lovers was turned, then The High Priestess, the queen of secrets. He gave her some yen but didn't let her finish the reading, slipping his arm through mine and then taking me off to another ride.

There is a small petting zoo and he drags me to see the lambs and the piglets, laughing and joking until it is time to eat supper but instead of us leaving the park he insists on just grabbing something light. It is burgers we eat under neon lights, drinking over perked coffee and laughing at the memory of what we have done that day.

"We have done every ride here." He says looping his arm through mine again, "except that one." He gestures to the Ferris wheel. "I deliberately left it to last.

"but," I say, thinking I might need a drink before I can do that.

"We're not that grown up, surely." He says, "We'll grab a beer and then the big wheel okay."

And what choice do I have but to give in when he looks so lovely and he wants it.

The beer comes in waxed cups with a thick foamy head, I buy it with a giant salted pretzel the kind you can get on the streets of New York. They are hot and good and there are salt freckles on his lip that he licks away and I think I might faint as he laughs. When he drinks the beer it leaves a moustache and I wipe at my mouth with the side of my hand because I'm scared I might have one too.

"You are so precious," he says with a laugh, then his pink tongue pokes out to clean away the foam, "we're at the funfair," he says, "we're supposed to eat crap and get it all over your face and then lick it clean."

I'm not sure if I heard it right, but between the loud heartthrob and rather painful goosebumps, I could've fainted right here right then. I've been feeling like fainting all day anyway, must as well…

But he does not give me much chance to think, before I know it, he has leaned forward and licked the remains of beer foam from the corner of my lips. It is not so bad, actually, but I have to act like the fool I have become, and shift my head that our lips meet.

And he does not pull back.

For a moment I think about the delicious pretzel, but I know it is not pretzel pressing to my lips, it is his lips, soft an a bit cold from the beer, and it's moving against my lips, so it's not pretzel, and it's more delicious than pretzel...

I almost grunt when he pulls back as we hear the giggling of girls nearby. He smiles, looking so innocent as if he has not just done something so… so terrible… embarrassing… no, pleasant, whatever, and I… I cannot help but wanting more.

My knees almost gave away when once again his pink tongue pokes out to lick his lips, this time very, very slowly. I want to be those lips… no, those tongue… no…

"We can do it once again in the Ferris Wheel," he says. I barely listen to him as I am busy wondering how he manages to keep the innocent look on his face. "Nobody will see." Suddenly, he brings up the true purpose of a Ferris Wheel. "Or…"

My heart stops as he pauses. He looks at me directly in the eyes, then his eyes darken. "Or we can find a motel and do it there."

Fortunately, it is the time I get the grip of my self control back. "Are you propositioning me?" I ask, putting a little mocking smile at the corner of my lips.

He smiles. He only puts me in worse torture by doing that. "Haven't you been thinking about that all of this time, for all these months?"

I push my glasses up my nose bridge, acting as if that is the stupidest words I have ever heard while I can feel my dick practically dances in joy in my pants. _Take him, take him, you bastard, _it may scream if it could.

"Well, if you think…," but I don't get to finish my words. His lips on mine stop me from talking, and thinking.

It is only a brief one, and when he breaks it, he says, "Let's go to the Ferris Wheel." His breath is quick and short.

I know that even after this, when I finally get myself into a Ferris Wheel, I still don't have the story to tell. I won't be able to share my experience of enjoying the ride, the view, the excitement. It is indeed exciting, but I concentrate more on exploring his mouth and lips and tongue and teeth, that it takes us three rounds on the giant wheel before we decide that that's enough for the day.

Not enough for me, not enough at all.


End file.
